Golden Dreams

Perhaps the most successful and well-known Iranian composers of the last 100 years, Javād Ma’roufi (1912-93) was born into a musical family. His parents had both been pupils of the master Persian composer, Darvish Khan. And when his mother died (probably in 1920), Javād’s musical education continued under his father until he entered the Academy of Music in Tehran. There he switched from violin to piano and was inspired to study the works of European classical figures such as Beethoven and Chopin. He was a pioneer both in writing traditional Persian music for the piano, as well as for his lifelong attempts to merge Eastern and Western compositional techniques. Apart from composing, Ma’roufi also worked for the Iranian Ministry of Culture, helping to bring music education into Tehran’s schools. He was an accomplished pianist and played on broadcasts for Radio-Tehran from its inception. Ma’roufi’s most popular piece is the idyllic “Golden Dreams,” which maintains a single, simple texture of melody and accompaniment. Its vocally-inspired style owes a debt to all manner of Western keyboard preludes from Bach and Schumann to the minimalists and recent “New Age” composers.

(c) Jason Stell