Take a look at the Capacities of Musical Composition in the Baseet Form, Based on Its Definitions in the Treatises of the Montazamiyeh School

 
The primary aim of this research is to attain an updated definition of the Baseet form; a formal structure of a highly significant composition form in the old classical music of Iran. Determining the limits and boundaries as well as the capabilities and requirements of this form, the potential capacities of the Baseet Form are investigated and examined in order to attain a formal model along with its derivatives. The goal of posing this research question is offering solutions for the revival and reemergence of this form in the musical composition of the contemporary music of Iran. Examining the extant documents of the Montazamiyeh School, written in the mid-Islamic Era (13th-17th centuries), it seems that this form was first defined and delineated by Abd al-Qadir Maraghi, the prominent musicologist of the 15th century. Furthermore, Maraghi’s explanation of the Baseet, regarding the sections’ quantity and the quality of each section’s structure, is much more extensive than that of other writers. Therefore, taking advantage of the method of library research, Maraghi’s unsystematic and disorganized definitions of this form were collected from his writings, and they were classified according to structure and content. However, since Maraghi’s definition is very flexible and lacks the rigor which is necessary for attaining clarity, the writings of other writers in this field have also been consulted so that our definition of the Baseet form may be clarified. It should be acknowledged that the flexible definition that Maraghi proposes that the Baseet and his admission of Miankhaneh into this form have resulted in a confusion of concepts and an amalgamation of the definitions of Baseet with broader genres like Kar-o-amal. Therefore, after detailed examination of these writings, the observations of the writers who wrote after Maraghi about the definition of the Baseet were deemed superior and more enlightening. Since the Miankhaneh section is regarded as optional in Maraghi’s definition, and the very existence of Miankhaneh in Baseet and Ghowl-o-Ghazal is disputed by some writers after Maraghi, our proposed solution to this dilemma is that Miankhaneh be discarded from the structure of the Baseet altogether. Thus, in order to avoid confusing the definition of the Baseet structure with Kar-o-amal, we propose that the Baseet be considered a form consisting of Sarkhaneh and Bazgooy, just as Maraghi himself, in some of his definitions, had described in this way. Thus, after comparing and analyzing the collected data, we have documented different possible kinds of the Baseet—based on its overall structure and contents—in the form of distinct formulas, in order to propose practical strategies that can be implemented in the composition of the Baseet. The extraction of the rules governing this form as well as the documentation of its accurate systematic structure in the present research can be a useful step in the systematization of musical composition in contemporary classical music of Iran as well as presenting a comprehensive definition of this musical form. Finally, in order to resolve the contradictions between the various definitions, some solutions have been presented.