Ali-Naqi Vaziri

Ali-Naqi Vaziri, also transcribed as Ali Naghi Vaziri (Persian: علی نقی وزیری) (October 1, 1886 in Tehran, Persia – September 9, 1979) was a composer, thinker and a celebrated player of the tar. He is considered as a revolutionary icon in the history of 20th century Persian music.
Ali-Naqi Vaziri (also known as Colonel Vaziri) is one of the seven children of Musa Khan Vaziri (a prominent official in the Persian Cossack Brigade) and Bibi Khatoon Astarabadi, a notable Iranian writer, satirist and one of the pioneering figures in the women's movement of Iran; her book "Ma'ayeb al-Rejal" (Failings of Men, also translated as Vices of Men) is considered by some as the first declaration of women's rights in the modern history of Iran. The celebrated artistic painter Hassan Ali Khan Vaziri is Ali-Naqi's brother.
Ali-Naqi Vaziri was a master of Persian classical music so that he was able to play the tar in a style very reminiscent of that of Mirza Abdollah. He always looked for new dimensions and perspectives in musical expression, and by doing so he revolutionized the style of playing the tar. He was the first to transcribe the classical radif of the Persian music. He developed the sori and koron symbols to annotate Persian quarter-tone notes in standardized musical notation.
Vaziri for years was the director of Tehran Conservatory of Music and a professor at the University of Tehran.
Innovations.
Vaziri was the first Iranian musician (in contemporary history) to go to Europe to study music, and after his return to Iran he was for a long time the only musician familiar with and promoted the theory of Western classical music. He was also the first to translate Iranian music into writing by writing the book "Dastar Tar".
Vaziri was the first to introduce and promote "equal moderation" in Iranian music; in this way, each octave was evenly divided into 24 notes. This method made it possible to create harmony in music. His experiments with musical scale was work in the direction of blending Western polyphony into Iranian music. His creation of the 24 step scale was created "with the intention of accommodating the application of Western harmony to musical compositions within Persian modes." He first described this view briefly in The Grammar and then in more detail in Theoretical Music. He invented a new Iranian music notation for accidentals, calling the additions sori and koron; the first raises the bottom of a note by a quarter of a step and the second raises it by a quarter of a step.
Alinaghi Vaziri trained students, some of whom became famous in Iranian music, including: Abolhassan Saba, Ruhollah Khaleghi, Javad Maroufi, Heshmat Sanjari. He invited some artists of his time (such as Ali Dashti, Ali Akbar Dehkhoda, Gholamreza Rashid-Yasemi, Badiozzaman Forouzanfar and Hassan Taqizadeh) together to establish an "Academy of Fine Arts" with the aim of collecting a culture of musical words and which may have became the basis for the formation of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature.