References to Čakāvak as title of a melody (Pers. navā, Ar. laḥn, naḡma, etc.) are found in classical Persian lexicons and poetry, e.g., Manūčehrī, p. 231 v. 2770). It was probably part of the musical heritage of the Sasanian period (see Eqbāl, p. 29; it does not figure, however, among “the thirty sweet laḥns” which, according to Neẓāmī Ganjavī, in Ḵosrow o Šīrīn, pp. 126-29, the Sasanian musician Bārbad selected for a special royal audition “from the one hundred dastāns which he knew in instrumental music”).
Later references to Čakāvak as a melody integrated into a larger musical grouping or system (Ar. maqām, Pers, dastgāh) are found, e.g., in the Bahjat al-rūḥ (Joy of the soul), a musical treatise in Persian by ʿAbd-al-Moʾmen b. Ṣafī-al-Dīn (ca. 10th-11th/16th-17th centuries), and in the Boḥūr al-alḥān, also in Persian, composed in 1322/1903-04 by Forṣat Šīrāzī (d. 1339/1920): In the former, Čakāvak is presented as one of the two gūšas (melodies) of the šoʿba (branch, subdivision) called Rakb, itself part of the Kūčak (small, minor), which is reported to be one of the twelve musical maqāms “according to the ḥokamāʾ [philosophers]” (see the circular diagram in the Pers. text, p. 93; Eng. tr., typewritten text, p. [44]); in the latter, which deals with the relationship of traditional Persian music with prosodic meters, it is mentioned (p. 24) as one of the āvāzes (vocal songs, q.v.) of the Homāyūn (lit. “august”)—one of the seven dastgāhs best known and most often performed in the author’s time.
In contemporary Persian art music, the full radīf (range, repertory) of which comprises twelve dastgāhs, each with its own repertory of gūšas, Čakāvak and Naḡma-ye čakāvak (Lark’s song) constitute, respectively, the seventh and eighth gūšas of the Homāyūn (see Zonis, p. 85 etc.; Ḵāleqī, pp. 14-15; Mallāḥ, p. 120; Barkešlī, Gāmhā, p. 132, and La musique traditionnelle, p. 49, both including a partial notation of Čakāvak; complete transcription of Čakāvak and Naḡma-ye čakāvak in western musical notation is provided by Maʿrūfī, pp. 5-7).
For a music sample, see Čakāvak.
Bibliography
ʿAbd-al-Moʾmen b. Ṣafī-al-Dīn, Bahjat al-rūh, ed. H. L. Rabino de Borgomale, Tehran, 1346 Š./1967; ed. and tr. by H. L. Rabino de Borgomale, photocopy of the typewritten text, 1943.
M. Barkešlī, Gāmhā o dastgāhhā-ye mūsīqī-e īrānī/Les gammes et les systèmes de la musique iranienne, Tehran, 1355 Š./1976.
Idem, La musique traditionnelle de l’Iran, Tehran, 1973.
ʿA. Eqbāl Āštīānī, “Mūsīqī-e qadīm-e Īrān (mūsīqī-e ʿaṣr-e sāsānī,” in Majmūʿa-ye maqālāt, ed. M. Dabīrsīāqī, Tehran, 1350 Š./1971, pp. 27-32.
Forṣat Šīrāzī (Forṣat-al-Dawla), Boḥūr al-alḥāṇ . . ., ed. M.-Q. Ṣāleḥ Rāmsarī, Tehran, 1367 Š./1988.
R. Ḵāleqī, Mūsīqī-e īrānī, Tehran, 1364 Š./1985.
Ḥ.-ʿA. Mallāḥ, Manūčehrī Dāmḡānī o mūsīqī, Tehran, 1363 Š./1984.
M. Maʿrūfī, Radīf-e haft dastgāh-e mūsīqī-e īrānī/Les systèmes de la musique traditionnelle de l’Iran (Radif), avec transcription en notation musicale orientale, Tehran, 1973.
Neẓāmī Ganjavī, Ḵosrow o Šīrīn, ed. Ḥ. Pažmān Baḵtīārī, Tehran, 1343 Š./1964.
E. Zonis, Classical Persian Music. An Introduction, Cambridge, Mass., 1973.