Mah Didam was written for The Hermes Experiment and features on their second album SONG.

Composed for soprano, clarinet in Bb, harp and double bass, it explores the connections between Iranian classical music and Renaissance counterpoint. While such musical systems seem fairly separate, they do in fact share a great deal of common ground. Both are musics concerned with the horizontal rather than the vertical, with melodic lines rather than harmonic progressions, and with the aesthetic and moral primacy of the voice. One key difference between these musics, however, is their tuning systems. While Renaissance counterpoint – at least in its contemporary performances – uses Equal Temperament, Iranian music makes use of a tuning system built on natural perfect fifths. This piece makes use of both tuning systems side by side, encouraging the listener to directly confront the connections between these musical worlds. 

The words in this piece are from a poem by Rahi Mo’ayeri (1909-1968) and are translated as follows:

I saw the moon, it reminded me of your beautiful face.