(b Tehran, 1897; d Tehran, 1985). Iranian tār player, composer and teacher. He came from a family of celebrated musicians. His father was Aqa Hossein Qoli and his uncle Mirza Abdollah, both highly respected tār and setār players. He studied the tār with his father from the age of eight and, on his father’s death in 1915, he continued further training with his uncle. He was 14 when he made his first recording, accompanying the singer Jenab-e Damavandi. Other recordings, both as a solo tār player and as an accompanist to singers, followed. By the early 1920s he was widely recognized as the country’s foremost tār virtuoso.
In his maturity, Shahnazi developed a highly colourful and dramatic style of tār playing. He favoured strongly delineated dynamics; his plectrum strokes were clear, rapid and diversified. Many of his broadcast performances are preserved in the archives of Tehran Radio; the Iranian Ministry of Culture also holds a recorded collection of his rendition of all the dastgāhs of traditional music. As a teacher, Shahnazi was active throughout his adult life. He taught both privately and at the Conservatory of National Music in Tehran; many of the leading tār players of the late 20th century were his pupils.
Shahnazi was also active as a composer. During the early years of the 20th century, the practice of composition independent of extemporized performance gained popularity in Iran under the influence of Western music, and the composition of tasnifs, Chāhārmezrābs, Pishdarāmads and rengs became central to the activity of the more progressive musicians. Throughout his life, Shahnazi made major contributions to the development of these new compositional forms; he left a large corpus of compositions in all four categories.
HORMOZ FARHAT