Parviz Yahaghi

Who is Parviz Yahaghi?

Parviz Yahaghi was a distinguished Iranian composer and violinist. He was born in Tehran in 1936 and died in Tehran in 2007.

His birth name was Parviz Sedighi Parsi. He was musically educated primarily by his uncle Hossein Yahaghi, a violinist and violin teacher, from whom Parviz adopted the Yahaghi name. During his youth Parviz was exposed to many highly professional musicians in Tehran who were friends of his uncle. A notable visitor at his uncle's house was the violin teacher, composer, and musicologist Abolhasan Saba, who is credited with making improvements in violin playing technique in the Persian tradition. Saba published a two-volume training manual for the violin in 1944-45. Starting from about 20 years of age Parviz Yahaghi was employed for a little over two decades as a musician with the Iranian government-financed radio station. In the 1960s and 1970s at the radio station he composed hundreds of pieces both for violin and for celebrated singers in Iran such as Banan, Marzieh, Delkash, Pouran, Elahe, Homeyra, Mahasti, Dariush Rafei, Homayoonpour, and Iraj. These compositions were often produced in connection with the long-running radio program Golha. Yahaghi's ability in playing violin, his compositions, and his musical director's role made him a central figure in Persian music during his lifetime. Yahaghi's violin is tuned in a way that gives different resonances and drones to the sound, compared to standard European tuning, and he uses a number of different tuning schemes.