| Summary: | All cultures celebrate that which makes them unique and admirable in their own eyes. Commonly, every society periodically sets aside the concerns of everyday life and turns to celebration. Noriiz, the Iranian New Year, is a celebration which gives an ordered structure to the life of Iranians. In shaping this thesis a multidisciplinary approach has been used in which anthropological, historical, musicological and ethnomusicological disciplines came alongside each other. An anthropology study of Noriiz led to the fact that Noriiz is a festival in which Iranians celebrate the resurrection of nature in spring after a cold winter. Finding signs of Noriiz- related tunes, old Iranian music and poetic sources were examined. This enquiry led to uncovering several cases of Noriizf modes and tunes belonging to both pre-Islamic and Islamic periods. One of the significant results of this study was decoding and analysis of one of the oldest Noriizf songs, Tarfqeh min Noriiz ji ?Orb ai-Ramal, from the thirteenth century, now reconstructed in modem notation. Examining Noriiz with relation to the contemporary raaifof Iranian classical music showed that the names of three Noriizf shu 'beh-ha of adwlirf era match those of three gusheh-ha in the contemporary raaif of Iranian classical music, namely Noriiz-i 'arab, Noriiz-i khlirli and Norfiz-i saba. In an ethnomusicological field-based apPt-oach the performances of hlijfjiriiz in urban areas and noriizkhlin in remote places of the Elburz region were examined. Studying and comparing the contemporaneous performances of noriizkhlin-ha and hlijf jiriiz-ha revealed connections with anthropological and historical issues such as the ancient belief of returning of farvahar-ha to the earth. Drawing such connections can be seen as one of the main contributions of the multidisciplinary approach selected for this thesis, allowing a link to be made between mythological investigations and ethnographic studies.
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