Almeomusica

[sasasha]

That is a really great project! I'm a bit sad I can't ask much in the way of interesting questions... I don't know anything about music or musical theory!

If I can make suggestions, I'd love to know how Academy-era Xurnese music sounds like.
Just a tiny bit of it, or a brief sketch of the overall picture of course! I do understand this is probably one of the hardest parts of your project...

Thanks, Ares Land!

You're right, getting anything that actually sounds like Xurnese music is going to take a while.

However, I don't mind lifting the lid on a couple of improvisations (using a microtonal iOS app), and one other draft, that give the tiniest hints of what's to come.

The app is very hard to control, and these are just my attempts, in real time, to explore sonorities which might be typical within Xurnese Salon music. Please don't judge too harshly! ‒ they're the equivalent of extremely rough sketches on napkins.

(Also, all of this music is Endajué linked, and all of it is meditative/slow, which is of course just one tiny facet of the vast world of Xurnese music. I want to make some ecstatic Xurnese music, and some ‘secular’ i.e. non-Endajué-rooted music, at some point...)

Xurno: Little Pucigéseč Fanfare

• This is a tiny sketch for the Xurnese organ (which has 60 divisions per octave). The ‘point’ of this is to illustrate the structure of the reverberent drone (imagine a large domed building to house this instrument, in which other instrumentalists and dancers can join the organ) coupled with a melodic duet, which plays with notes either very nearly next to each other or very nearly but not quite the notes which make the most mathematical sense to go with them, a feature which produces a trippy acoustic phenomenon called ‘beating’.

Xurno: Ritual Figures

• This is waaay more draftalicious even than the above; but it illustrates two features to be developed. One: mystical drone on a ‘symmetrical chord’ on the Xurnese organ. (The organ's interface, as I've understood it so far, is a tall tubular structure about the diameter of a doorway, usually set on a pillar ascended by spiral stairs near the centre of the roof level of a domed structure, with what we might think of as ‘stops’ rather than keys arranged in a helix all the way up the tube. The helix structure creates a lattice, and one thing Endajué organists tend to do is use visual symmetry to create mad chord progressions, which they weave slowly by e.g. closing one stop but opening the two stops northwest and northeast of it, etc.). Two: that sort of texture being cut through by soloistic zither/dulcimer-type-thing* playing. (The buttons on the app are tiny, hence I keep trying and failing to play the same figure, in 60-EDO, this will be much better mocked up in a DAW rather than with a live instrument.)

Xurno: Dzúsuc movement from the lišu dzusnar of Lidau (draft)

• Finally, this piece (also still a draft) is a bit of a cheat: it's the only piece I wrote (the material of) previous to this project which I think I might usefully cannibalise for it. It uses our equal-tempered 12-tone scale ‒ but that was within the Xurnese range of possibilities, so it's valid. I imagine 3 or 4 zither-type-things being played, once again, beneath a Xurnese organ. I have it posited as a movement from a dzúsuc service in the lišu dzusnar of Lidau. It feels like a useful atmosphere sketch; dancers and musicians punctuated portions of these services, which occured every nineday.

In case you missed it above, here is some Verdurian musicological writing that touches, in part, on Xurnese music. Poncör Žambey: The Barakhinei Scales of the West

*Zomp, Xurnese terms for these instruments (the organ, and something like the zither / particularly like the Turkish qanun / also a bit like the guzheng ‒ counterpart to the Verdurian dičura) would be amazing!

[bradrn]

Xurno: Little Pucigéseč Fanfare

• This is a tiny sketch for the Xurnese organ (which has 60 divisions per octave). The ‘point’ of this is to illustrate the structure of the reverberent drone (imagine a large domed building to house this instrument, in which other instrumentalists and dancers can join the organ) coupled with a melodic duet, which plays with notes either very nearly next to each other or very nearly but not quite the notes which make the most mathematical sense to go with them, a feature which produces a trippy acoustic phenomenon called ‘beating’.

Sad to say, the thought which immediately came into my head upon hearing this was, ‘telephone ringing tone’. (Or, quite possibly, a dialup modem, although that was before my time.)

[So Haleza Grise]

What do you want to hear next? Something Kebreni? Something Lácaturian? Something Barakhinei? Something Ismaîn? Something Skourene?

Ooh, did the Skourenes have musical notation? What about the Tzhuro? I presume they could have learned it from them perhaps.

Overall - this is great! I am dipping into it slowly. I can really appreciate all of the careful effort that has gone into this.

[So Haleza Grise]

I thought of a question. In the classical European musical tradition, you have to know at least a little Italian to read sheet music. Do they need to know Caďinor in Ereláe?

[bradrn]

So, preliminary thoughts on Verdurian percussion:

I was at a bit of a loss as to where to begin with this, until I recalled that Verdurian has a Thematic Dictionary, which — thank zompist! — has a list of percussion instruments:

Percussion. badhul - percussion instrument / bashti - the sticks; closh - bell; chana - kettledrum, metal drum; chinya - triangle or other metal badhul; klesh - cymbals; klok - blocks, produces knocks, rasps; teclora - clavier; taca - castanets, produces clicks; tompom - drum

What stands out most to me about this list is the fact that most of these are idiophones (i.e. things which make a sound when you whack them). More specifically, they’re unpitched idiophones — there’s no xylophones, glockenspiels or tam-tams here.

By contrast, the inventory of membranophones (i.e. drums) is small, but striking by Western standards. In our own music, kettledrums are unusual in being the only pitched drum in a standard orchestra: we can probably assume the čana are similarly pitched. I can’t find any details about the tompom, but if the name is onomatopoeic, it sounds highly likely that this is a pitched drum too (cf. English ‘tom-toms’, or the West African dundun).

The odd one out in this list is the teclora ‘clavier’. I thought at first this might be a typo for ‘clave’, but no, according to the Verdurian Dictionary it’s definitely a keyboard instrument. Now, in a manner of speaking, plucking and hammering of strings are certainly percussive techniques… but no less than baďul on an endivyón, and that instrument is listed under dronul ‘strings’. It seems unreasonable to me that instruments using the same sound-making technique are classified as dronul when done manually, but baďul when done via a keyboard! (If anything, it should be the other way round.) I suggest that zompist moves the clavier over to ‘strings’ in this dictionary.

But, ignoring the teclora, it seems that we have a two-way division here, between unpitched idiophones and pitched drums. This differs from the Western standard, in which pitched percussion instruments are mostly idiophones. (The cloš ‘bells’ do spoil this neat classification a bit, but then again bells can be made to be unpitched too.)

I’ll also suggest that these two categories might have somewhat different origins. It has already been mentioned that prototypical instruments of the Western Wilds are the tent-pegs, amongst other metallic objects; indeed, the endivyón sample provided by sasasha has a natural place for such rhythms. It’s also worth noting that bašti in the percussive sense is a loan from Ismaîn. Meanwhile, čana and tompom both appear to be native Verdurian words. (As is cloš, for that matter.)

So, to me, this seems to point to a history wherein the Verdurian classical music tradition preferred the refined sounds of pitched drums (and possibly bells), while the coarse canaille prefer lively folk songs with strong rhythmic accompaniment. (Like a samba band, perhaps? They have about the right inventory of percussion.) How it develops beyond that, I’m not sure, but that does sound like a plausible starting point to me.

(Incidentally, let me also use this opportunity to mention the friction drum, a thoroughly bizarre category of instrument I discovered this morning. To me the sound is thoroughly unappealing, something like a cross between a bad violinist and a piece of taut rubber… but the construction and technique reminds me strongly of the descriptions given for endivyón technique, so perhaps it has a place in Verdurian music!)

[sasasha]

I see you've caught the bug, bradrn! This is essentially the nature of the work I've been doing.

Some great observations here, for which I'm thankful. In particular I'm grateful for the catch about čana, which I hadn't really noticed probably ought to be pitched. However, I will have to spoil your neat classification further: Verdurians have pitched idiophones. I've used plenty in my work, and posted about them in Music of Verduria. In particular there's a set of what we might term ‘crotales’, which I've termed činyora. There's a continuity, btw, from Skourene metallic idiophones, to Xengimanian ones, to Eretaldan ones, which I've also written about there. So yes ‒ pitched percussion is somewhat non-native in that it is borrowed from the South. But rather anciently.

You may be interested in the performance notes and score of the piece ‘Utro im Čéremen’ (the recording of which has been on Youtube for a few years). There’s a fair bit said about a particular style of Verdurian percussion there, and you can see how it plays out in the piece itself.

Re the teclora: the piano is absolutely categorisable, and commonly categorised, as a percussion instrument, and the teclora being thus classified does make sense, IMO. (If the piano had to be classified as a string instrument and only a string instrument, would the drum not have to be classified as a membrane instrument and only a membrane instrument? And why shouldn't the piano instead sit in a category with the dulcimer as a hammer instrument? The point is ‒ such terms are not exclusive.)

Also, I wouldn't want to give the impression that the endivyón is only played in baďul style. In fact, even in 3480, it is probably the case that it is quite rarely played thus, statistically speaking. Baďul playing is a folk survival of an ancient technique which is still hanging on in 3480 in marginal areas. My focus on it stems from the fact that I wanted to document it, as it carries an enormous amount of history with it, and sounds weird and unique, and will (I think) influence popular movements of ‘the future’. Still, in 3480, the endivyón is more commonly played in lirtene style (with the hair of the bow). As I present things I've worked on, I'm in constant danger of presenting the notion that an area of Almean music is generally done this way. Quite the contrary: I've kind of gone in hard on the ancient roots and the odd outliers of Ereláean musical culture, and left the middle, whilst I circle it, closer and closer as more data swims into resolution.

Incidentally, the design of the teclora and its tradition is one of these big central areas of undone work; I've been preoccupied for a long while instead with the çişte (watch this space). All I've said so far on the teclora is that the ‘keyboard’ layout will owe something to the Xurnese organ, which, as you can read above, is arranged in a vertical helix. I don't yet know what it will owe to it ‒ perhaps not all that much, as that sounds mighty cumbersome for a piano analogue ‒ but that's where I’m going to start with keyboard instruments in Ereláe, and see where we go.

Ultimately, bradrn, I quite agree with your general remarks about the separation of classical and folk tradition in Eretald wrt percussion. And I love the thought of incorporating the friction drum! Rubber’s availability in Eretald since early times is one of the key things that sets the development of music there apart from the development of music here. Rubber is acoustically fascinating!

[sasasha]

I thought of a question. In the classical European musical tradition, you have to know at least a little Italian to read sheet music. Do they need to know Caďinor in Ereláe?

This is a great question, to which I don't yet have an answer! Apart from to say that this certainly wouldn't be the case in all Ereláe ‒ but possibly Eretald (and possibly Sarnáe). Do you think Eretald would use Caďinor this way?

My own instinct says ‘not really’. After all, Caďinor is quite old (more so than Italian). And I've noticed ‒ particularly, actually, in Almea＋400 (I hope this doesn't count as a spoiler!) that Verduria and Kebri tend to coin their own scientific terms, or borrow them from each other, where Europeans and Americans use Latin and Greek terms.

I think Eretaldan sheet music probably uses Verdurian musical terms. But religious music may keep more Caďinor alive ‒ in the way that, in England today, a classical score may be marked e.g. ‘adagio’, whilst a plainsong chant may be marked e.g. ‘tonus peregrinus’.

What do you think?

[zompist]

I think Eretaldan sheet music probably uses Verdurian musical terms. But religious music may keep more Caďinor alive ‒ in the way that, in England today, a classical score may be marked e.g. ‘adagio’, whilst a plainsong chant may be marked e.g. ‘tonus peregrinus’.

This seems like a good place to start. There's already a feeling that Caďinor is "more holy." (This would apply to pagan music. Eleďe music undoubtedly owes a lot to that, but also to Arašei and Barakhinei music, and might even preserve some aspects of CE 300 Greek music.) Your Dark Ages musicology would of course be written in Caďinor, and beyond that in Ismahi and Kebri. (As in other cultural areas this often means lots of Cuêzi terms too, borrowed into Caďinor.)

For what language you'd write your musical notation in... well, this sort of thing is really power politics. Italy was the most advanced Western civilization for a key couple of centuries, enough to persist (in music) when the leading language became French, then English. There was never a time when Eretald was dominated culturally by Ismahi or Kebri (or Flora) in that same way. Verdurian is probably the least exciting answer, but I think that's what it'd be.

Specific innovations can of course keep their linguistic origins, as bašti < Ism. baçti.

But we're not done! Just to complicate things, there was a period, from the 3000s to the 3200s, when Kebri was ahead of Eretald. That's why accounting and naval terms in Verdurian are mostly Kebreni. I'd also note that printing was invented in Érenat, which speaks Verdurian but is even more influenced by Kebreni— and printing sheet music, it's rather convenient if you don't have to translate the relatively small bits of language.

So I'll put the question back to sasasha: when does modern music notation get finalized? Especially the text that appears in printed music? Basically, if you wanted, it could be Kebreni.

[sasasha]

What do you want to hear next? Something Kebreni? Something Lácaturian? Something Barakhinei? Something Ismaîn? Something Skourene?

Ooh, did the Skourenes have musical notation? What about the Tzhuro? I presume they could have learned it from them perhaps.

Overall - this is great! I am dipping into it slowly. I can really appreciate all of the careful effort that has gone into this.

Thank you! And, actually, again, I don't know, though my instinct is that no, they hadn't developed musical notation per se. Aside from the Skourene culture test, I think the majority of our knowledge of Skourene music comes from (a) archaeology and (b) Axunašin musicology: there are numerous finds of decaphonic ‘theatrical’ sets of Skourene ‘ship bells’ used in dramatic performances in the tsalagir, and plenty of actual ship bells too; and Sixulis of Weinex wrote about Skourene scales and musical traditions (I'm not sure exactly when, but quite a long time ago, in Axunašin). There probably was some contemporary documentation of Skourene musical traditions, but whether it particularly much survived directly into the 3480 world, I don't know. I think any such documentation was probably mostly concerned with the dramatic side of things, whereas the music was... Well... As likely as the lewd tsalagir dancing to receive detailed treatment on its own merit.

(Actually when I say ‘our’ knowledge I'm confusing two things: Verdurian scholarly knowledge of 3480 and beyond, and literally ‘our’ knowledge as in yours and mine in the real world. I'm not actually sure whether the Skourene culture test fits in to in-world data; it's more like the Almeopedia, in being explicitly written for a terrestrial perspective. But anyway it talks tantalisingly about Skourene music!)

[sasasha]

I think Eretaldan sheet music probably uses Verdurian musical terms. But religious music may keep more Caďinor alive ‒ in the way that, in England today, a classical score may be marked e.g. ‘adagio’, whilst a plainsong chant may be marked e.g. ‘tonus peregrinus’.

This seems like a good place to start. There's already a feeling that Caďinor is "more holy." (This would apply to pagan music. Eleďe music undoubtedly owes a lot to that, but also to Arašei and Barakhinei music, and might even preserve some aspects of CE 300 Greek music.) Your Dark Ages musicology would of course be written in Caďinor, and beyond that in Ismahi and Kebri. (As in other cultural areas this often means lots of Cuêzi terms too, borrowed into Caďinor.)

For what language you'd write your musical notation in... well, this sort of thing is really power politics. Italy was the most advanced Western civilization for a key couple of centuries, enough to persist (in music) when the leading language became French, then English. There was never a time when Eretald was dominated culturally by Ismahi or Kebri (or Flora) in that same way. Verdurian is probably the least exciting answer, but I think that's what it'd be.

Specific innovations can of course keep their linguistic origins, as bašti < Ism. baçti.

But we're not done! Just to complicate things, there was a period, from the 3000s to the 3200s, when Kebri was ahead of Eretald. That's why accounting and naval terms in Verdurian are mostly Kebreni. I'd also note that printing was invented in Érenat, which speaks Verdurian but is even more influenced by Kebreni— and printing sheet music, it's rather convenient if you don't have to translate the relatively small bits of language.

So I'll put the question back to sasasha: when does modern music notation get finalized? Especially the text that appears in printed music? Basically, if you wanted, it could be Kebreni.

Oohhh... Fun!!

I'm going to reply with a big “Darkness is the gateway of all understanding” and think about this for a while. (I think now you've said it, I'm going to struggle not to want Kebreni to have a big influence here!)

Also ‒ centering early music printing in Érenat in general makes sense to me.

For onlookers ‒ zomp and I did already have an email discussion where he corrected my thinking re documentation of Ismaîn music: I had originally had it written in Ismaîn... Rather earlier than Ismaîn particularly existed. Caďinor certainly has a big role in musicology in Eretald ‒ but zomp is right to reflex the question ‘what language are musical terms generally in’
to ‘where did modern music notation really get finalised’?

I think I need to get a big visual timeline made up...

PS. In my head, I frequently implicate Kebri in my uses of the word Eretald. I know Eretald refers to the plain, and Kebri sits outwith that, but it feels like there's a cultural area here for sure (the Mižicama littoral plus Eretald, plus Sarnáe, maybe, and plus a few other outliers too): does it have another name?

[zompist]

PS. In my head, I frequently implicate Kebri in my uses of the word Eretald. I know Eretald refers to the plain, and Kebri sits outwith that, but it feels like there's a cultural area here for sure (the Mižicama littoral plus Eretald, plus Sarnáe, maybe, and plus a few other outliers too): does it have another name?

I faced this in Almea+400, and I just used Eretaldan for the complex of Eretald + Flora + Ismahi + Kebri + Érenat. This corresponds to how Verdurians use etaldete. The Kebreni say bohamite 'littoral' instead (including Verduria). (I try not to use Eretald itself in this extended meaning.)

In premodern times (i.e. everything before Almea+400, ending in 3480), the important distinctions were within this group (mostly north/south and linguistic); if you wanted to refer to the whole cultural entity you'd probably say caďin, but that would include the Barakhinei and Sarnaeans. In the modern period
the distinction is between Eretaldans and the rest of Ereláe. (Well, until the mid-3600s when people talk about the geopolitical blocs instead...)

[bradrn]

However, I will have to spoil your neat classification further: Verdurians have pitched idiophones. I've used plenty in my work, and posted about them in Music of Verduria. In particular there's a set of what we might term ‘crotales’, which I've termed činyora. There's a continuity, btw, from Skourene metallic idiophones, to Xengimanian ones, to Eretaldan ones, which I've also written about there. So yes ‒ pitched percussion is somewhat non-native in that it is borrowed from the South. But rather anciently.

Oh, what a pity! So maybe the classification is merely ‘pitched’ vs ‘unpitched’ percussion, as it is here.

(Can’t say I’m completely sorry, though. Crotales are fun.)

You may be interested in the performance notes and score of the piece ‘Utro im Čéremen’ (the recording of which has been on Youtube for a few years). There’s a fair bit said about a particular style of Verdurian percussion there, and you can see how it plays out in the piece itself.

Thanks for this! Bass drum, let me note, is very inadequate as a kettledrum replacement — though it might fit in the category of tompom. I believe I might actually be able to access a set of kettledrums, if really needed.

The piece itself, on the other hand, actually doesn’t surprise me that much, percussion-wise. (Aside from not respecting my careful classification, that is!) I had been thinking that many pieces would use percussion mostly to mark the beat, and this fits well into that paradigm.

Re the teclora: the piano is absolutely categorisable, and commonly categorised, as a percussion instrument, and the teclora being thus classified does make sense, IMO.

Oh, I‘m fully aware it can be categorised as percussion. It just seemed weird to be that it would be percussion while endivyón would be strings.

But I see now that you’ve included a cimbalom under ‘percussion’ in Utro im Čéremen, and in conjunction with your notes on bowed endivyón, that makes more sense now.

And, out of curiosity: do Verdurians consider there to be much of a relationship between dičura and baďul-style endivyón?

Incidentally, the design of the teclora and its tradition is one of these big central areas of undone work; I've been preoccupied for a long while instead with the çişte (watch this space). All I've said so far on the teclora is that the ‘keyboard’ layout will owe something to the Xurnese organ, which, as you can read above, is arranged in a vertical helix. I don't yet know what it will owe to it ‒ perhaps not all that much, as that sounds mighty cumbersome for a piano analogue ‒ but that's where I’m going to start with keyboard instruments in Ereláe, and see where we go.

The only helix-like instrument I’m aware of is the sheng. And actually, it could be fairly easy to adapt this into a variety of positive organ — simply take the pipes and mount them on a circular rather than linear base. That would give you at least a circular keyboard, from which a spiral one could be derived.

That being said, I’m not entirely sure how one could construct a circular or spiralling keyboard instrument which uses strings. After all, you do need somewhere to mount the strings, and a flat soundboard is convenient if you want to avoid the whole thing collapsing in on itself. I guess it could work if you turn it into, essentially, a mechanically-plucked zither (cf. the valiha of Madagascar), but you lose a lot of tone that way.

(It might also be interesting to experiment with an isomorphic keyboard layout… although then again, that really depends on equal temperament as a prerequisite.)

outwith

And, tangentially: ah-ha! Found the Scotsman!

[sasasha]

Bass drum, let me note, is very inadequate as a kettledrum replacement — though it might fit in the category of tompom. I believe I might actually be able to access a set of kettledrums, if really needed.

Cool, I'll bear that in mind.

And, out of curiosity: do Verdurians consider there to be much of a relationship between dičura and baďul-style endivyón?

They're quite different, and the dičura is as often plucked as it is struck. They also have different cultural associations: the vyon family and endivyón are the chief melodic instruments of the renaissance; the dičura of Caďinas. But, they're both string instruments, so, yeah, to that extent.

Incidentally, the design of the teclora and its tradition is one of these big central areas of undone work; I've been preoccupied for a long while instead with the çişte (watch this space). All I've said so far on the teclora is that the ‘keyboard’ layout will owe something to the Xurnese organ, which, as you can read above, is arranged in a vertical helix. I don't yet know what it will owe to it ‒ perhaps not all that much, as that sounds mighty cumbersome for a piano analogue ‒ but that's where I’m going to start with keyboard instruments in Ereláe, and see where we go.

The only helix-like instrument I’m aware of is the sheng. And actually, it could be fairly easy to adapt this into a variety of positive organ — simply take the pipes and mount them on a circular rather than linear base. That would give you at least a circular keyboard, from which a spiral one could be derived.

Yes, that was my thinking. Pipes can easily be mounted in an actual helix, if you adjust them in terms of where in the radius of the circle they are set. The diameter of larger instruments may need to be wider than I've stated (about the width of a doorway) ‒ perhaps vastly so ‒ but this is the essential idea.

That being said, I’m not entirely sure how one could construct a circular or spiralling keyboard instrument which uses strings. After all, you do need somewhere to mount the strings, and a flat soundboard is convenient if you want to avoid the whole thing collapsing in on itself. I guess it could work if you turn it into, essentially, a mechanically-plucked zither (cf. the valiha of Madagascar), but you lose a lot of tone that way.

(It might also be interesting to experiment with an isomorphic keyboard layout… although then again, that really depends on equal temperament as a prerequisite.)

I'm much more thinking the latter than the former. The development will probably proceed something like this: someone decides to combine the idea of large 4＋ octave dičuras and the idea of mechanical triggering from a latticed interface from the Xurnese organ. But they lie the interface flat (and here the details peter out, as I need more data to ‘grow’ around this to be able to fill it in).

outwith

And, tangentially: ah-ha! Found the Scotsman!

Elementary, my dear bradrn... Except that I, in fact, am not at all Scottish and merely like useful words!

[bradrn]

And, out of curiosity: do Verdurians consider there to be much of a relationship between dičura and baďul-style endivyón?

They're quite different, and the dičura is as often plucked as it is struck. They also have different cultural associations: the vyon family and endivyón are the chief melodic instruments of the renaissance; the dičura of Caďinas. But, they're both string instruments, so, yeah, to that extent.

…you know what, I do believe I confused my Verdurian terms there. I meant to ask about the teclora vs endivyón, given what I said about the similarities in baďul style.

But the note on Caďinor mudic is interesting! Given that you use it in Žažarka Řopuehë, how come the dičura survived for so long?

outwith

And, tangentially: ah-ha! Found the Scotsman!

Elementary, my dear bradrn... Except that I, in fact, am not at all Scottish and merely like useful words!

Blast! Foiled by a red herring!

[sasasha]

And, out of curiosity: do Verdurians consider there to be much of a relationship between dičura and baďul-style endivyón?

They're quite different, and the dičura is as often plucked as it is struck. They also have different cultural associations: the vyon family and endivyón are the chief melodic instruments of the renaissance; the dičura of Caďinas. But, they're both string instruments, so, yeah, to that extent.

…you know what, I do believe I confused my Verdurian terms there. I meant to ask about the teclora vs endivyón, given what I said about the similarities in baďul style.

But the note on Caďinor mudic is interesting! Given that you use it in Žažarka Řopuehë, how come the dičura survived for so long?

It just did! People kept playing and making them, and developing and adapting their design. Once playing with the hair of the bow had become standard, there was renewed excitement for the vyon family at the expense of the dičura, which was relegated to more of a harmonic / accompaniment instrument in classical music (though continued to have an eminent place in folk music). But it's a simple and useful design and makes a nice noise; it simply had no reason to fall out of use completely. Until the teclora, probably.

On that note, yes perhaps the link between baďul string playing and the teclora was noticed. Perhaps there's interesting stuff in that thought to guide the development of the teclora a bit.

[sasasha]

PS. In my head, I frequently implicate Kebri in my uses of the word Eretald. I know Eretald refers to the plain, and Kebri sits outwith that, but it feels like there's a cultural area here for sure (the Mižicama littoral plus Eretald, plus Sarnáe, maybe, and plus a few other outliers too): does it have another name?

I faced this in Almea+400, and I just used Eretaldan for the complex of Eretald + Flora + Ismahi + Kebri + Érenat. This corresponds to how Verdurians use etaldete. The Kebreni say bohamite 'littoral' instead (including Verduria). (I try not to use Eretald itself in this extended meaning.)

In premodern times (i.e. everything before Almea+400, ending in 3480), the important distinctions were within this group (mostly north/south and linguistic); if you wanted to refer to the whole cultural entity you'd probably say caďin, but that would include the Barakhinei and Sarnaeans. In the modern period
the distinction is between Eretaldans and the rest of Ereláe. (Well, until the mid-3600s when people talk about the geopolitical blocs instead...)

Ah ‒ this is very helpful! Does Vdn. etaldete not really cover Barakhûn, then? (Makes sense!)

[zompist]

Ah ‒ this is very helpful! Does Vdn. etaldete not really cover Barakhûn, then? (Makes sense!)

Depends on the context. If you're talking about colonization or the advanced countries compared to the rest of the planet, no. On the other hand 3600s Verduria thinks of Eretald itself as its sphere of influence, and hat includes Barakhun.

It's kind of like "Western civilization" in English, which is a prototype rather than anything rigorous. Some nations are clearly part of the term, but once you look at edge cases it starts to look quite arbitrary. (Are Poland and Hungary "Western"? Is Greece? Is Japan? Are the French overseas territories included?)

[sasasha]

A bit of progress on something I've been brewing a while, which will eventually be an Eleďe part-song setting a Verdurian translation of one of the verses from the Count of Years. (And maybe part of a larger oratorio-style work.)

Cleir Lerimánio explanation, text and demo

As I explain, I would appreciate any help working out how to get the text to flow and the drama to happen in the right places! It's strange to compose in a language you haven't mastered: you have to do a lot of parallel processing to try to get the text pronounced right, sing it as you intend, and respond to the dramatic elements of it.

The text is read at 3:09, and the singing starts at 5:17.

The text, as currently versified, is here:

1.
Kiel iskridne, so ktuvóc! Ktuďece kiel zet atikne,
How it wailed, the ktuvoc! How angrily it thrashed,
com guleren šualán, com řopeilán šobostán,
like an angry horse, like agitated brine,
kaë iripe tayem ke imutoran eseyü.
which shakes the hero who tries to tame them.
Cleir Lerimánio curce so ans glavei.
Majestic Lerimánio held the hilt of the sword.

Ak guleren šualán, ak řopeilán šobostán,
Against an angry horse, against agitated brine
cleir Lerimánio curce so ans glavei.
majestic Lerimánio held the hilt of the sword.

2.
Še proklir, še badair, so dësul siča vulne
Cursing, screaming, the creature was wanting
ilun crusan, ilet dširen, ab undašin oliorin lië.
to reach him, and tear him, with its terrible claws.
Ac com ctel ke cure šual, curce tot cruyece;
But as a person who restrains a horse, he held that thing tightly
com nabron ke ya šri aďoraži ya er zëem.
like a captain who knows hurricanes, indeed, and seas.

Ak guleren šualán, ak řopeilán šobostán,
cleir Lerimánio curce so ans glavei.

3.
Com ctel ke cure šual, curce tot cruyece;
com nabron ke ya šri aďoraži ya er zëem
lebeřandre so grom. Brugivne so glavam
he maintained the power. He twisted the sword
im uemán soei ďëfkui, adike ďonde fue er šušde.
in the heart of the monster, until it was still and died.

Ac cleir Lerimánio curce so ans glavei
im uemán soei ďëfkui, adike ďonde fue er šušde.

4.
Kiel iskridne, so ktuvóc! Ktuďece kiel zet atikne,
com guleren šualán, com řopeilán šobostán,
kaë iripe tayem ke imutoran eseyü.
Cleir Lerimánio curce so ans glavei.

Uy, cleir Lerimánio curce so ans glavei
im uemán soei ďëfkui, adike ďonde fue er šušde.

More: show

zomp's English version:

How it wailed, the ktuvok! How angrily it thrashed,
like a horse shaking a rider, like the sea tossing a ship.
Lerīmanio, implacable, held the sword-hilt.
Cursing, screaming, the ktuvok wished
to reach and rend him with its terrible claws.
But like a man taming a horse, he held tight;
like a captain who knows storms and seas
he kept his head. He twisted his sword
in the creature's heart, till it died and was still.

My non-versified translation:

Kiel iskridne, so ktuvóc! Ktuďece kiel zet atikne,
com guleren šualán, com řopeilán šobostán,
kaë iripe tayem ke imutoran eseyü.
Cleir Lerimánio curce so ans glavei.
Še proklir, še badair, so dësul siča vulne
ilun crusan, ilet dširen, ab undašin oliorin lië.
Ac com ctel ke cure šual, curce tu cruyece;
com nabron ke ya šri aďoraži ya er zëem,
lebeřandre so grom. Brugivne so glavam
im uemán soei ďëfkui, adike ďonde fue er šušde.

PS. It's worth repeating that Verdurian music is supposed to sound somewhat similar to European music... Whatever that is. There are differences, but they're not really apparent here. Almean music gets a lot more unfamiliar than this!

PPS. I noticed a grammatical error: it should be “com ctelán”.

[zompist]

A bit of progress on something I've been brewing a while, which will eventually be an Eleďe part-song setting a Verdurian translation of one of the verses from the Count of Years. (And maybe part of a larger oratorio-style work.)

Cleir Lerimánio explanation, text and demo

As I explain, I would appreciate any help working out how to get the text to flow and the drama to happen in the right places! It's strange to compose in a language you haven't mastered: you have to do a lot of parallel processing to try to get the text pronounced right, sing it as you intend, and respond to the dramatic elements of it.

The text is read at 3:09, and the singing starts at 5:17.

This really sounds great. I maybe gave you a hard time about the emotion in the Lácaturian song, but that's because passion is what makes Lácaturian singers popular. Both the text and the song are performed just right here. For Eleďi this is a thrilling text but one they've heard hundreds of times, it should be done joyfully but not melodramatically.

Kind of want to hear a heavy metal version (much) later on.

I like that you're getting fluent in speaking (and singing!) Verdurian. I do notice that you lose the c/k distinction sometimes. Now it may be that in singing they do approach each other. But it can also add some drama to the first line, where the harsh k sounds are describing the monster.

PPS. I noticed a grammatical error: it should be “com ctelán”.

True!

[zompist]

Oh, and if any Almeologists want to find the context, it's here.