Notes on a Setar's white string, tuned to C

The koron (

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

: کرن), meaning "less than lower in pitch", is a symbol used in traditional Persian music in order to lower or "flatten" a written note by an interval smaller than a

semitone A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone, is the smallest musical interval commonly used in Western tonal music, and it is considered the most dissonant when sounded harmonically. It is defined as the interval between two adjacent no ...

(broadly corresponding to a

quarter tone A quarter tone is a pitch halfway between the usual notes of a chromatic scale or an interval about half as wide (aurally, or logarithmically) as a semitone, which itself is half a whole tone. Quarter tones divide the octave by 50 cents each, a ...

, or specifically a half flat). It is used to alter the pitch of a written note, similar to that of a sharp or a flat. It is written as a line with an open triangular head at the top-right. The koron symbol is positioned in the same manner as other

accidentals In music, an accidental is a note of a pitch (or pitch class) that is not a member of the scale or mode indicated by the most recently applied key signature. In musical notation, the sharp (), flat (), and natural () symbols, among others, ma ...

in Western music, and can even be used in

key signature In Western musical notation, a key signature is a set of sharp (), flat (), or rarely, natural () symbols placed on the staff at the beginning of a section of music. The initial key signature in a piece is placed immediately after the clef at ...

s (see example below). In the early 20th century, Iranian master musician Alinaghi Vaziri established the standard usage of this symbol in written music. It is used for notating many of the

microtones Microtonal music or microtonality is the use in music of microtones—intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of tw ...

found in traditional Persian music. A note so altered can be labeled as the note's letter, followed by "koron" (e.g., "B koron", "D koron", etc.). Character representation of this accidental symbol together with Sori encoding (encoded as U+1D1E9 and U+1D1EA) microtones used in modern Iranian classical music added to the Unicode standard in Version 14.0.0. File:Koron in music notation.png, Koron in music notation

References

{{Reflist

External links

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glyph (Standard Music Font Layout) Persian music">SMuFL
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See also

References

External links