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Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2020 7:23 am
by bradrn
sasasha wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 7:04 am
bradrn wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 6:48 am
sasasha wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 5:25 am I'm thinking something along the lines of each bsepa maintaining a set of metallophones (originally associated with temples, but perhaps used on boats to keep time and give instructions? - maybe not all the time, but in adverse weather conditions) with ever so slightly unique pentatonic tuning, meaning that ships could be aurally distinguished to the trained ear and spatially located in the dark.
So, basically like a slightly more standardised slendro scale?
Less standardised, or equally unstandardised, I'd have thought.
I was referring to this bit:
sasasha wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 5:25 am Eventually more dominant tuning systems were solidified as culturally significant, came to represent entire city-states rather than bsepa, and made their way into the tsalagir and umnenalnas (particularly useful for accompanying epics featuring sea voyages). A portable 'theatrical set' of metallophones was developed with various options for each interval specifically to allow musicians to evoke one city state or another, and string instruments would be tuned to match.
By contrast, my (very limited) understanding of the slendro scale is that it varies from ensemble to ensemble with little standardisation (though it’s usually near 5-TET).
'Bells' is probably a bad word for it, but we don't have a great one in English. Think 'metal drums' hit with beaters: gamelan definitely provides the nearest analogues.
Crotales? Steelpan? Bonang? Đông Sơn?

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2020 8:01 am
by sasasha
bradrn wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 7:23 am
sasasha wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 7:04 am
bradrn wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 6:48 am

So, basically like a slightly more standardised slendro scale?
Less standardised, or equally unstandardised, I'd have thought.
I was referring to this bit:
sasasha wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 5:25 am Eventually more dominant tuning systems were solidified as culturally significant, came to represent entire city-states rather than bsepa, and made their way into the tsalagir and umnenalnas (particularly useful for accompanying epics featuring sea voyages). A portable 'theatrical set' of metallophones was developed with various options for each interval specifically to allow musicians to evoke one city state or another, and string instruments would be tuned to match.
By contrast, my (very limited) understanding of the slendro scale is that it varies from ensemble to ensemble with little standardisation (though it’s usually near 5-TET).
Ah, I see what you mean. Yes, I suppose the theatrical set is a sort of standardisation, but stemming from the fact that there were many regional standards, and travelling theatre musicians wanted to be able to carry them all round in miniature in one go - both to fit in, and to be able to evoke another region.

(Slendro and pelog have also standardised over time - whilst I believe there can still be variation from set to set, there was once wider variation. Still, the variations are not too great since they stem from a similar source, while the Skourene ship modes became deliberately comparatively very different from one another in some cases.)
'Bells' is probably a bad word for it, but we don't have a great one in English. Think 'metal drums' hit with beaters: gamelan definitely provides the nearest analogues.
Crotales? Steelpan? Bonang? Đông Sơn?
Sure, but they're all a bit culturally specific. I might stick to bells for now until they get a native term and a bit more development.

Crotales are actually a good analogy for the sound I want. I used crotales in both the Verdurian pieces I've written so far, you can hear them especially prominently in the Patreon video. But I'm thinking these are a much refined (i.e., physically smaller, delicately hung, designed to sound 'pure', with their resonant capabilities maximised) version stemming from the Xurnese isaur instruments, which in turn stem from the Skourene 'ship bells'.

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2020 8:54 am
by sasasha
Just noticed this in the Skourene culture test:
Music is decaphonic and polyrhythmic, based mostly on drums, horns, wooden flutes, and sitars. But there's an undeniable charm to country music, with its pentatonic scale, simple rhythms, and reliance on reed pipes and bagpipes.
This will be fun. Decaphonic! Great. I think the 'ship modes' system would be a cool way for this to develop: start off pentatonic, but start varying notes up or down, effectively introducing intermediate notes; standardising that system, ending up with ten to the octave. How does that sound? The rest fits well.

Also, re Caďinorian music, in the Belief Systems page:
There are many things that sound or smell holy to you: the bells and incense bowls at the temple; the sounds and smells of the sacrifices there; the sound of Caďinor; the particular, old-fashioned but familiar sounds of Caďinorian music.
Verdurian Culture Test:
You love Verdurian dance music. In most cases, if you want to hear music, you have to make it yourself. You probably know how to get on tolerably well with at least one musical instrument. Professionals do come through town; you'd go out of your way to hear Ismaîn music, with those bulbous guitars of theirs. You also like to listen to the sad songs of Lacatur-- so long as the Lacaturians don't stick around too long after they stop singing.
Curious - what is Lacatur?

(I may use this post to collate such references.)

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2020 9:06 am
by bradrn
sasasha wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 8:01 am Ah, I see what you mean. Yes, I suppose the theatrical set is a sort of standardisation, but stemming from the fact that there were many regional standards, and travelling theatre musicians wanted to be able to carry them all round in miniature in one go - both to fit in, and to be able to evoke another region.
Nope, I was talking about how each city-state has its own standard tuning. My impression of slendro is that it doesn’t even have that much (though I know next to nothing about that subject).
Crotales are actually a good analogy for the sound I want. I used crotales in both the Verdurian pieces I've written so far, you can hear them especially prominently in the Patreon video. But I'm thinking these are a much refined (i.e., physically smaller, delicately hung, designed to sound 'pure', with their resonant capabilities maximised) version stemming from the Xurnese isaur instruments, which in turn stem from the Skourene 'ship bells'.
Ah, of course! I do hear the crotales now. I had assumed all the instruments in that music were computer-generated (using a DAW or MuseScore or similar), which strikes me as rather naïve now that I think about it — just because you’re primarily a singer, of course that doesn’t mean you can’t play other instruments! (Unless they were computer-generated crotales, that is…)
sasasha wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 8:54 am Just noticed this in the Skourene culture test:
Music is decaphonic and polyrhythmic, based mostly on drums, horns, wooden flutes, and sitars. But there's an undeniable charm to country music, with its pentatonic scale, simple rhythms, and reliance on reed pipes and bagpipes.
But I like your description enough that I’m tempted to declare the culture test wrong on this! (Though only zompist can do that, of course.)

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2020 9:17 am
by sasasha
I've made some edits to reflect the culture test details. It actually fits rather well, which is exciting.

They are indeed computer generated crotales! Everything was computer generated. (I mainly used Sibelius, and GarageBand to EQ and add some reverb).

Zomp -- I'm having a fun time thinking about non-human Almean music. Iliu music, with advanced tech, separate genres for above and below the surface, and infrequent cultural influence into human societies... well, there's a lot to think about there. Do the Ktuvoks appreciate music? To what extent do they allow their human subjects to? And the Elkari, Murtani, Icëlani, and Rifters... *mind blown*

Any thoughts on this?

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2020 4:48 pm
by zompist
Wow, sasasha, you've hit the ground running. This is great stuff.

I like the microtonal stuff for Xurno, and especially the Salon cataloguing all the variants. Having unbelievable artistic complexity, then cataloguing it, is quintessentially Xurnese.

The bells for ships and bsepas is brilliant. I assume you mean that the tuning can differ by ship or clan? E.g. A is 440 Hz for Clan A, 424 for Clan B, 461 for Clan C? I love this idea, which would give a sort of visceral reaction of "home" when you hear your own tuning, a disquiet for other tunings. What do you do for an inter-bsepa wedding? Alternate, or attempt to use both sets at once?

I assume you've seen the Art page in the Thematic Dictionary, which is full of musical terms. You can ask for more terms of course. I don't know if you like or can do something with the idea that Verdurians consider there to be five rather than four voice ranges.

Lácatur is the Western Wild, the region just west of Verduria city. Lácaturians live a precarious life as they have no central government or large cities, and wandering musician is just one of their professions— they also have a reputation for thievery. As this was the last part of Cuzei to be conquered, a hint of Cuzeian music might persist here. (If you look closely at the maps in the Almea+400 video, you'll notice that Verduria has finally asserted its authority over Lácatur.)
sasasha wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 9:17 am Zomp -- I'm having a fun time thinking about non-human Almean music. Iliu music, with advanced tech, separate genres for above and below the surface, and infrequent cultural influence into human societies... well, there's a lot to think about there. Do the Ktuvoks appreciate music? To what extent do they allow their human subjects to? And the Elkari, Murtani, Icëlani, and Rifters... *mind blown*

Any thoughts on this?
Iliu music should be as strange as possible. Like the language, the aesthetics should be determined by what can be transmitted underwater— that might take some research! For speech, I've assumed that tone, loudness, and percussion are easily perceived, while most of the differences between human vowels and consonants get muddied.

I haven't thought much about ktuvok music, but I don't see why they wouldn't have some. They have to do something all day. Naturally they'd have humans provide it. It would sound sinister to Verdurians, but only due to cultural associations. The feeling is not reciprocal: in fact, I can see ktuvoks appreciating foreign music, as a harmless novelty.

Perhaps Dhekhnami music provides the equivalent of the diabolus in musica, the tritone. Europeans avoided it for centuries as literally diabolical, and only slowly embraced it, though it was still used for spooky or sinister things (e.g. it's used in the Danse macabre). I don't mean that the actual tritone is Dhekhnami— you can decide what the thing is, something characteristic of Dhekhnami music that Eretald avoids.

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2020 6:30 pm
by sasasha
zompist wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 4:48 pm Wow, sasasha, you've hit the ground running. This is great stuff.
Thanks!! It's great fun!

It's a bit late now so I'm just going to mention two points and leave the rest till tomorrow.

1) I think I've found the catalyst for the žažarka řohuepë craze: Andrea's trip to Xurno in 3299. Maybe it took a while to get going, attracting criticism and controversy at first as most nascent musical styles do, but once it got going it really got going. The fervent decade might have been the 3330-40s, after which it continued to be frequently composed (with increasing complexity and innovation) for around a century. This means Verdurians of the 3480s would likely feel a similar way about it as we (ok, I) feel about the music of, say, the early 20th century -- not quite of this era, but not far out of it; accessible; traditional; comforting; nostalgic; 'as it should be', perhaps. The only thing I'm not sure about with this timeline is the backdrop of civil war -- but music is often enjoyed as a diversion from political shenanigans, I guess.

2) I was listening to an amazing CD of traditional Vietnamese music just now and thinking that whilst it's cool to be discovering this awesome aesthetic for the music of Xengiman and the Littoral, I don't want these concepts to be geographically cut off there -- there's so much potential to explore in them that I want more world to spread them across. Certain things could be innovated separately (i.e. microtonal music might well arise somewhere else on Ereláe) but if there's a chance to do it via influence spreading instead, I think that's preferable, given that musical tradition has a natural tendency to flow rather lithely between cultures. So I think I've tracked (via the Historical Atlas and various Almeopedia articles) a plausible route of transmission for musical influences from Xengiman to infuse and fully traverse the barbarian plain in the 1500 years between 1000 and 2500, especially during the Dark Years... even influencing the music of the Somoyi-Met'alyi, and thence Lácatur, meaning that (a) there's more Xurnese-influenced musical world for me to explore/imagine, and (b) the musical culture in Lácatur is probably actually just as much descended from 'Southern' as from 'Northern' Ereláean music. Some otherwise-forgotten Cuzeian styles can persist there too. (This may even be somewhat true for Barakhûn.) Then there's the possibility of influence from Westerners. This whole area could be an interesting musical melting pot -- and I do notice that 'Funky' has "good music" (ha!), which might reflect this.

Also, when I was reading about Mália, I came across this passage: "If she concentrated on architecture, religion, and art rather than firm central authority, this was Caďinorian tradition: culture was what was held to distinguish the Caďinorians from the barbarians." This made me think that after the Bešbalic and Gelyet had been expelled from Eretald, within Caďinor there would have been a strong cultural backlash against anything they had brought with them, meaning any 'Southern'-seeming music would have been very much suppressed in favour of the (more European-esque) Caďin tradition. This cultural crusade didn't hold outside of the Caďin political sphere, hence in the Western Wilds folks are still strumming somewhat 'Southern' instruments in somewhat 'Southern' ways. But by the time of Andrea this prohibition has relaxed and Caďinorian composers begin to play with 'Southern' exoticisms again. (Of course, the Caďin musical tradition will also expand into a larger global arena -- in the colonies. Music in Dhekhnam probably also relates to it, to an extent.)

All that was basically an excuse to allow me to make a sad song of Lácatur that uses somewhat exotic 'Southern' tuning! Does that sound ok? Do you have any leads on a text, zomp?

Thanks again for all the thoughts you've given me, I'm really glad you're liking it so far. You can probably tell how much I've been enjoying this!

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2020 8:04 pm
by bradrn
zompist wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 4:48 pm The bells for ships and bsepas is brilliant. I assume you mean that the tuning can differ by ship or clan? E.g. A is 440 Hz for Clan A, 424 for Clan B, 461 for Clan C?
I’m not sasasha, but if his idea is anything like that slendro scale I mentioned earlier, then it would be a slightly different idea: no note has a standardised frequency, with the intervals between notes varying with the tuning of each particular ensemble.
Iliu music should be as strange as possible. Like the language, the aesthetics should be determined by what can be transmitted underwater— that might take some research! For speech, I've assumed that tone, loudness, and percussion are easily perceived, while most of the differences between human vowels and consonants get muddied.
That sounds interesting, so I did a bit of research. It appears that underwater, low frequencies are transmitted best while high frequencies are absorbed, though the absorption only becomes particularly relevant above about 1 kHz. Reverberation causes transient sounds to be ‘smeared out’, while the dependence between density and pressure becomes non-linear (so e.g. a sine wave will naturally gain harmonics and eventually turn into a sawtooth wave). Additionally, some depths (particularly the thermocline) act as a ‘waveguide’ allowing sound to travel particularly fast and clearly, though even in general sound travels faster in water than in air. For more information see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_acoustics.

EDIT: In terms of music, they’d also probably use some variant of the hydraulophone. I seem to remember reading about one which worked entirely underwater, though I can’t find it now.
Perhaps Dhekhnami music provides the equivalent of the diabolus in musica, the tritone. Europeans avoided it for centuries as literally diabolical, and only slowly embraced it, though it was still used for spooky or sinister things (e.g. it's used in the Danse macabre). I don't mean that the actual tritone is Dhekhnami— you can decide what the thing is, something characteristic of Dhekhnami music that Eretald avoids.
My impression is that the tritone was considered ‘diabolical’ mostly because it was extremely difficult to sing, as well as being one of the most dissonant intervals possible (calculations show that only the semitone is more dissonant); it was never avoided completely, though it did gain an association with evil. Perhaps sasasha, as a singer, might know more about this?

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2020 11:17 pm
by Pedant
On the subject of Munkhâshi if not Dhekhnami music, may I make the suggestion that the music not quite conform to musical scales per se, but to chanting similar to Native American songs? No definable notes per se, more of an emphasis on steadily increasing volume and tempo as one goes along, and possibly not even definable lyrics in the case of communal songs? This might give the music quite an alien air to Cadhinorians while not, in itself, being at all evil--indeed, might serve both as a symbol of community spirit (due to the necessary interactions in a roundel-like spirit) and as music that resembles the emotional states of the ktuvoks themselves?
Consider: a battlefield. Thousands of Munkhâshi warriors lined up in formation, the most impressive donning gear mimicking the ktuvok overlords. They start a chant with a passable whistling growl, resembling that of the ktuvoks again. Throat singing, of a sort--and slowly but surely the rest of the army takes up the chant, first quietly and then speeding up, roaring by the end as gogotalh might do before entering battle. Drums keep the beat, and conch shells (or similar things) rattle the very trees with the strength of their blasting. A sound to terrify both their enemies and their allies.
And then there’s a period of Cadhinorian occupation, and the old music dies out. But certain songs do survive, hidden in the modern twelve-tone scales. Where once was grunting and whistling and roaring, now village lullabies, nearly tuneless but soft and soothing, become the new method of passing on vocal traditions. Singing becomes modal, of course, and may even have words now, to say nothing of added instruments like flutes and harps, but some elements survive. The increase in speed, for example, never goes away, nor does the manipulation of one’s voice to sing with a throatier sound than speech.
Thoughts, Zompist and Sasasha?
Still “alien”. Still “unusual”. But by no means evil.

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2020 4:23 am
by sasasha
Pedant wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 11:17 pm On the subject of Munkhâshi if not Dhekhnami music, may I make the suggestion that the music not quite conform to musical scales per se, but to chanting similar to Native American songs? No definable notes per se, more of an emphasis on steadily increasing volume and tempo as one goes along, and possibly not even definable lyrics in the case of communal songs? This might give the music quite an alien air to Cadhinorians while not, in itself, being at all evil--indeed, might serve both as a symbol of community spirit (due to the necessary interactions in a roundel-like spirit) and as music that resembles the emotional states of the ktuvoks themselves?
Consider: a battlefield. Thousands of Munkhâshi warriors lined up in formation, the most impressive donning gear mimicking the ktuvok overlords. They start a chant with a passable whistling growl, resembling that of the ktuvoks again. Throat singing, of a sort--and slowly but surely the rest of the army takes up the chant, first quietly and then speeding up, roaring by the end as gogotalh might do before entering battle. Drums keep the beat, and conch shells (or similar things) rattle the very trees with the strength of their blasting. A sound to terrify both their enemies and their allies.
And then there’s a period of Cadhinorian occupation, and the old music dies out. But certain songs do survive, hidden in the modern twelve-tone scales. Where once was grunting and whistling and roaring, now village lullabies, nearly tuneless but soft and soothing, become the new method of passing on vocal traditions. Singing becomes modal, of course, and may even have words now, to say nothing of added instruments like flutes and harps, but some elements survive. The increase in speed, for example, never goes away, nor does the manipulation of one’s voice to sing with a throatier sound than speech.
Thoughts, Zompist and Sasasha?
Still “alien”. Still “unusual”. But by no means evil.
Sounds wonderful to me!!

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2020 5:29 am
by Ares Land
While researching Mesoamerican music, I came across the death whistle, an instrument I now very much wish to forget about :)
This might a good addition to Dhekhnami music. Or perhaps to the military music of another, "nicer" culture that's into psychological warfare.

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2020 5:55 am
by sasasha
Ares Land wrote: Sat Sep 19, 2020 5:29 am While researching Mesoamerican music, I came across the death whistle, an instrument I now very much wish to forget about :)
This might a good addition to Dhekhnami music. Or perhaps to the military music of another, "nicer" culture that's into psychological warfare.
Oh wow - hearing it (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I9QuO09z-SI) makes me think this is definitely likely to be part of music-making in ktuvok empires, since the sound it creates sounds to me like a hybrid of a human scream and something 'whistling/growling' - very like ktuvok speech.

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2020 7:11 am
by sasasha
Just as a directive to self more than anything else, I'm getting a bit overly absorbed with all this and intend not to post about it again until Friday, which will henceforward be my 'working on Almean music' day. I have been reminded over the last few days that the level of detail that exists about Almea is simply incredible, and I could happily swim in it for weeks on end without living in the real world, but the real world calls.

Keep the ideas coming, though!

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2020 9:21 am
by Raphael
sasasha wrote: Sun Sep 20, 2020 7:11 amand I could happily swim in it for weeks on end without living in the real world, but the real world calls.
Ah yes, that feeling. Anyway, keep up the great work!

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2020 8:51 am
by sasasha
Raphael wrote: Wed Sep 23, 2020 9:21 am
sasasha wrote: Sun Sep 20, 2020 7:11 amand I could happily swim in it for weeks on end without living in the real world, but the real world calls.
Ah yes, that feeling. Anyway, keep up the great work!
Thank you!

I wanted to make a megathread for this with a contents page and links, but I decided on no structured update this week (my masters starts on Monday, and I've already ADHDed a number of important details like actually registering for the blooming course...). Here are some current plans explained in a stream of consciousness - some of which has been sort of said before, and this post may be more for my benefit than anything else!

I'm working on a short history of what Verdurians call 'barbarian music'.

Also a more objective, but also Verduria-centric history of music in Eretald.

In parallel development for this currently are notes on music of Kebri, Flora, and the elcari (who have had an important, steady influence since early times). I'm seeing Ismaîn music as a later stage of this project: it's obviously a if not the preeminent musical culture in 3480 Eretald, so I'll work up to it.

As well as thinking about the development of music creatively, I'm pulling words out of lexicons to build a picture of what is known already about the music of various cultures / seen as intrinsic enough a part of culture that it appears in the lexicon, and particularly seeing who borrowed what from who.

(For instance, Flaids have native words for 'song'/'sing' but borrowed 'music' from Kebreni and 'harmony' from Caďinorian. One might assume the Flaids have a casual oral musical tradition of their own -- I'm thinking an English folk song / ballad vibe, ranging from the lightly humorous to the gently serene, often unaccompanied -- but readily soak up musics from around the littoral which are seen as more sophisticated and good to try. (This may end up somewhat analogous to England's role in European musical development too... a German critic in 1904 described Britain as "the land without music", meaning what he thought of as 'serious music', of course.))

I'm trying to build the flavour of Kebreni music in my head -- whilst I'm trying to avoid falling back on terrestrial analogies too much, I was toying first with an 'Iberian music', then with a 'Celtic music' analogy.* (On the lookout for any snippets of Kebreni culture that aren't on the obvious pages of Almeopedia/Virtual Verduria, if anyone can help.) Whether or not these analogies hold, the Meťaiun substrate across Sarnae, Ereláe, and the Western Wild is turning out to be as important as the more recent barbarian incursions in shaping the musical culture of the continent. Think a primitive but vibrant Meťaiun folk music tradition adopted, adapted, rigorously categorised, and metamorphosed into a scholarly schema by the Cuzeians and spread by the Caďinorians. The further from the Eärdur you go, the less the Cuzeian scheme holds over the reflexes of the more rugged original tradition. This is one reason Ismaîn music is so good: Ismahi is perfectly placed to take the best from both styles. (Erenát is an exception to the geographical principle: its music is consciously neo-Cuzeian - perhaps a musical reformation followed the development of Eleďat there?). In the south and west of Eretald you also have 'barbarian music' to contend with (cf. my thread on the Suböyi). A recent realisation about that is that Lácatur is in some ways an even more fertile 'sweet spot' than Ismahi (open to the original Meťaiun folk tradition, the Cuzeian system, Caďin music, 'barbarian music', elcari music, modern Verdurian music and music from further north), but with far less infrastructure to maintain any kind of codified or patronised tradition.

Intriguing as the thoughts about Dhekhnami music are, I haven't got beyond the excellent 'they will have death whistles' suggestion. Ditto re iliu music. Xengiman and the (southern) Littoral will get renewed attention but they clearly have a distinct musical language so I have left them be for now. Other continents and post 3480 developments are virgin frontiers.

Yes, these are both romantic constructs, but you know what I mean.

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2020 10:42 pm
by zompist
I like the fact that you're making Eretaldan music really complicated. This has always been my hope for Almea... to make it almost fractal in complexity, partly as a response to the usual sf trope of making an entire planet or galaxy one culture.

I don't know if I'll get to it in time to help you, but I'm aiming to flesh out Kebri more. It will be more important than ever in the modern era.

One random thing about Kebri in a non-obvious place: this bit about Methaiun religion.

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2020 10:46 pm
by zompist
sasasha wrote:a German critic in 1904 described Britain as "the land without music", meaning what he thought of as 'serious music', of course.
Oh, and this reminded me of Nicolas Slonimsky's marvelous book, Lexicon of Musical Invective. It's comprised of extracts from negative reviews of music from 1800 to about 1930, and it's hilarious. Not only did some people hate every piece of music that's a classic today, but they hated it with eloquent passion. And as Slonimsky points out, they always hate the new music in the same way: it doesn't sound like music, it's just noise, it's clangy and clattery.

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2020 11:11 pm
by bradrn
zompist wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2020 10:42 pm One random thing about Kebri in a non-obvious place: this bit about Methaiun religion.
Funny, how close this is to my own ideas for a yet-to-be-fleshed-out conculture… (Could everyone stop stealing my best ideas please?)
zompist wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2020 10:46 pm
sasasha wrote:a German critic in 1904 described Britain as "the land without music", meaning what he thought of as 'serious music', of course.
Oh, and this reminded me of Nicolas Slonimsky's marvelous book, Lexicon of Musical Invective. It's comprised of extracts from negative reviews of music from 1800 to about 1930, and it's hilarious. Not only did some people hate every piece of music that's a classic today, but they hated it with eloquent passion. And as Slonimsky points out, they always hate the new music in the same way: it doesn't sound like music, it's just noise, it's clangy and clattery.
The same way they always hate new art, and new science, and new politics, and ‘those kids, they don’t speak properly these days, we’ll all be reduced to grunts soon’…

(Related: Leroy’s Exhibition of the Impressionists, the satirical piece which originally coined the term ‘Impressionist’, is a classic of the genre. But I’ll have to track down your book as well!)

EDIT: Found a selection of quotes from Sonimsky’s book. If the rest of the book is anything as funny as those, I shall have to find it as soon as possible!

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Mon Sep 28, 2020 1:57 am
by Raphael
sasasha wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2020 8:51 am(This may end up somewhat analogous to England's role in European musical development too... a German critic in 1904 described Britain as "the land without music", meaning what he thought of as 'serious music', of course.)
Oddly enough, that view doesn't seem to be limited to Germans - even Orwell once wrote
Here are a couple of generalizations about England that would be accepted by almost all observers. One is that the English are not gifted artistically. They are not as musical as the Germans or Italians, painting and sculpture have never flourished in England as they have in France.
though later in the same piece, he qualified it by writing that
there is one art in which they have shown plenty of talent, namely literature.
But I'm getting OT.

Re: Music of Verduria

Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2020 9:58 am
by sasasha
Some thoughts on Verdurian string instruments, with some ideas and suggested terms that it would be good to check before I run with them too much! :D

Re. 'endivyón' and the 'endi' bow.

Using the word endi for the bow makes me wonder whether it might have originally been literally a stick with no hair, banged against the strings to excite them (like the terrestrial col legno technique, and not dissimilar to the idea of the dulcimer).

Unless I’ve missed it (very possible) there’s no mention of bowed string instruments in southern Ereláe. Sitars, zithers, etc yes, but no bowed instruments that I can find. (Not saying they don’t exist, but that other types of chordophones are probably more central to those cultures.) So perhaps the idea of bowing string instruments didn’t come to Eretald from Xengiman or neighbouring cultures. Cad’inor arcos isn’t the basis of any musical term that I can find, either. So to understand the development of the endi bow I've been looking a bit wider than the idea of a transverse haired bow developed directly from the hunting bow (even though this is probably a development which happened independently in several areas on Earth). Such a bow was quite possibly a part of the musical culture of Eretald from early times, but my theory is that it may not be the only or even main precursor of the modern endi bow.

Since endi also means woodwind instrument, it’s tantalising if a bit romantic to imagine this idea catching on from a multi-instrumentalist using their flute/whatever to excite the strings of a vyon. Perhaps as a folk-etymology.

As to how hair came to be added... Possibly there was already a tradition of transverse, haired lyre-bowing in Ereláe, but also a tradition (perhaps more widespread, given how easy a stick is to come across or make compared to a haired bow) of using beaters. Practically, the transverse haired technique became standard by (maybe) renaissance times due to its much greater capacity for resonance in melodic playing, but linguistically the beaten technique won out as a way to describe both, probably because it was more deeply embedded in folk tradition.

Indeed what developed into the modern endi bow may have been seen as a way to achieve both techniques, given that the reverse and tip of a haired bow need be no different from parts of a stick. Beaten (baďul ?) playing may still form a key part of endivyón playing, particularly in folk contexts; bowing with the hair might be referred to as something to do with nüle… (‘curl, lock of hair’), or lir referring to its more melodic character — lirtene? Baďul playing may also be particularly associated with accompanying the voice.

This would have ramifications for the design of the modern endi bow, given its more central dual purpose. Its tip might have a slightly bulbous ending for baďul finta (?) ’tip-beating’. Its shaft may have a heavier (thicker) area roughly half-way along to allow elbaďul (?) ‘middle-beating’. Its handle would be designed for optimum switching between these (three) techniques. (N.B. elbaďul would be louder than col legno but still quite quiet; baďul finta — a technique without European equivalent that I can find — would potentially carry quite well, if my experiments are anything to go by.) The bow would likely be heavier and shorter, slightly disadvantaging it compared to the terrestrial violin bow in terms of (haired) legato melodic playing, and probably producing a slightly darker, duskier tone. (Perhaps in the modern period, streamlined bows designed purely for lirtene playing start to be produced, as the baďul style is left in the past.)


Interlude: on strumming

The modern Verdurian term for ‘string instrument’ is dronul, either a diminutive of drona ‘guitar’, or the past participle of dronen ‘to strum, play (music)’. The word drona is marked as “imitative” in the Verdurian Dictionary, indicating that the syllable dron- is thought to have been coined as an onomatopoeic representation of plucking a string.

The original association of string instruments with percussive excitement of the strings is strengthened by the alteration of Old Verdurian tröcen/trocen (derived from the dynamic form of Cad’inor trogan ‘to touch, be in contact with / contact’) to drocen ‘pluck (string instruments)’ by analogy with dronen. Strumming and plucking certainly seem to have been central to the idea of the string instrument for a long time, with bowing a development of later times.


A bit of background on the post-Classical vyon and the development of the endivyón

Descended ultimately from the Cuzêian viannas (which has its own history), the post-Classical vyon or ‘lyre’ was in fact a family of instruments of varying sizes, ranges and features. The Cuzêians may have sometimes bowed the viannas, but if so this practice left little trace; the Medieval vyon was traditionally plucked, struck or strummed. (N.B. The term 'vyon' may be used to refer to this instrument retrospectively, much as we may use 'lyre' with modern pronunciation and spelling to refer to ancient instruments.)

Anything from three to six strings were used, sometimes with additional bourdon strings, fixed to a flat bridge on a rectangular resonator. It was originally an n-frame instrument with no fingerboard. The strings were plucked with the fingers of the right hand or possibly a plectrum. The fingers of the left hand were used to mute certain strings to produce chords and harmonics; multiple tunings existed, though commonly strings were tuned to the tonic, supertonic and dominant to allow easy production of chords I and V. Pressure could be applied with the flat of the left thumbnail to the side of the outer string, or less effectively the undersides of the others, to allow a skilled player to produce a melody on a single string with a chordal accompaniment.

The fingerboard started to be added to the vyon’s frame already in the Classical period, allowing the easier stopping of the strings and thus a greater variety of notes to be produced; by the later Medieval period generally only the fingerboard remained, totally changing the technique of the instrument. (This bit, i.e. string instruments with one central fingerboard, might have been inspired by Southern Ereláe, given that in Classical times Skourene music used 'sitars'.)

Medieval and earlier vyons generally had a lower range than the modern endivyón, and were most often played resting on the legs. A horizontal position better suited larger instruments, while an upright position (like the viola da gamba) suited medium-sized ones; the orientation had some ramifications for playing techniques (which I won't go into here). Being lower and more often played unstopped, their sound characteristically had a longer decay, more like a terrestrial harp. Thus they were well suited for the baďul technique, and, if it is true that there were ever multi-instrumentalists playing their vyons with their flutes, it would have been using this sort of vyon that they were using. Using beaters (without hair) known as endi to play the vyon was already common in the Late Classical period.

The niche of ‘small, high string instrument capable of producing a sweet melody’ was filled in Early Medieval times not by the vyon, which was best suited to accompaniment of the voice or other instruments, but by the dičura family, generally played with a plectrum or the fingernails.

Smaller vyons were, however, increasingly made throughout the Medieval period and onwards to allow playing against the chest or neck (sometimes suspended by a strap) while walking or standing, and over time these became more specialised for melodic playing, for which to the pre-existing beater already known as the ‘endi’ was added a course of hair to form the precursor of the modern endi bow. The term endivyón came to refer to these smaller, melodic, chest-orientated, transverse-bowed vyons during the Renaissance period; the term itself reveals the conception of the endi bow as half of the instrument, not merely an auxiliary to it.

In modern times the vyon still exists as a regional and folk instrument. Whilst the term is very broad, referring to plucked, strummed and beaten lyre-like instruments of different sizes, shapes and functions, vyons in general differ from the modern endivyón so greatly that the extrapolated instruments of the endivyón family (principally the viond sëte and viond nizze) were named using a reborrowing of Caďinor viondos rather than using the base vyon.


Final thought for now

I quite want the Ismaîn çişte to evolve literally from the boxes that musicians carried their vyons around in. Or alternatively, this (and the multi-instrumentalist's endi=literal flute theory) to be origin stories for these instruments in folk-legend.

~~~

Please query, correct, suggest, etc! I know this is a bit technical and possibly not particularly interesting to all, but hey, I like detail. FYI I'm writing a piece for violin and soprano in Verdurian, to a fabulous text supplied by Zompist, hence I've been trying to think about how the endivyón might differ from the terrestrial violin. Watch this space. :)