Cancelled: Mantiq Al-Tayr: The Conference of the Birds

Idin Samimi Mofakham

Mantiq Al-Tayr: The Conference of the Birds:

1. Prologue
2. Valley of the Quest
3. Valley of Love
4. Valley of Knowledge
5. Valley of Detachment
6. Valley of Unity
7. Valley of Wonderment
8. Valley of Poverty and Annihilation
9. Epilogue

Mantiq Al-Tayr: The Conference of the Birds, is a 4600 lines mystical epic poem, by 12th-century Persian poet Farid al-Din “Attar” Nishapuri (1145–1221). The electro-acoustic journey of Mantiq Al-Tayr is a conceptual vision of bringing to life the story from Attar’s work through the sound by Iranian composer Idin Samimi Mofakham. The birds of the world gather altogether in need of finding a true leader of their kind and decide that only Sīmorgh, the benevolent mythical bird of the birds, can rule them all. In order to reach him, the birds begin their difficult journey.

Mofakham, fascinated by the stories of Attar, creates another compositional artwork of holographic composition technique, a term coined by the composer. It is a technique being based on two main subjects in music that interest him the most: psychoacoustics and the world of microtonality and non-western tuning systems. As a person fascinated by physics and mathematics, both psychoacoustics and microtonality are very attractive sources of inspiration for Mofakham. Blending those with Iranian musical systems, in the composer’s opinion, can reach to a very unique and yet new sounding world, the fusion of Orient and Occident. Mantiq Al-Tayr creates the artistic contribution to Mofakham’s research at NMH as a Ph. D. fellow.