A western-style symphony orchestra, like the Teheran Symphony Orchestra, by contrast, contains between fifty and one hundred musicians. Persian music and Middle Eastern classical music generally, is typically played by between one and four musicians. This is not a cultural fetish but is well-grounded in the kind of music that is being played. The music of Europe and the music of the Middle East share a common ancestor. They are both descendants of Greek music, with its mathematical bent and its working out of many different modes.
Major scales form one mode and minor scales another.
Until about eight hundred years ago the music of the two regions was fairly similar, and there was considerable cross-influence. For a sound sample of such early Western music, listen to a sample of track one of the following album on CDNow's website via RealAudio, click here . Western music is polyphonic where Middle Eastern music is monodic and 2. Western music is written out where Middle Eastern is largely improvised. If you understand these two differences, the rest pretty much falls into place.