The Qur’an as an Aesthetical Model in Music? The Case of Muhammad Reza Shajariyan between the Qur’an and radif

Any reader who has ever been immersed in the soundscape of any given region of the Muslim world, crossed as it is five times a day by the call to prayer (adhān) and other defining sounds of Muslim devotion, will be well aware of the sonic nature of the Qur’an.In this article I looked at how the ‘sonic nature’ of the Quran may have influenced, even unconsciously, poetry, singing and instrumental music. This phase prepared the ground for a discussion of the situation in twentieth- and twenty- first-century Iran, particularly regarding the key figure of the Iranian singer Muhammad Reza Shajariyān (b. 1940), who was at ease with both art repertory (radīf) and Qur’anic cantillation.