Morteza Neydavoud
Morteza Neydavoud was a tar player and composer, born in 1900 into a Jewish family of musicians, and a pupil of Darvish Khan, who gave him the golden axe the master awarded his best students. He composed for the singer Qamar-ol-Moluk Vaziri from 1927, opened a music school named after his teacher, and late in life recorded the radif, the repertoire of Persian classical music, for the archive. He emigrated to the United States in 1976 and died in California in 1990.
His father, a tonbak player, did not want him to be a musician either, and gave way. The teachers were Ramazan Zolfaghari, Aqa Hossein-Qoli and then Darvish Khan, who after three years told the eighteen-year-old he no longer needed lessons and should open a class of his own. Morghe Sahar is the composition everyone knows; the recordings with Qamar from 1927 on are the body of the work, and the radif he recorded for the Mahoor institute, some three hundred pieces, is the part that teaches.