The Festive Velvet

The Festive Velvet is a devotional form of music originating in The Wild Seasons. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. A speaker recites nonsensical words and sounds while the music is played on three thiliri. The musical voices are joined in melody. The entire performance is consistently slowing, and it is to be very loud. The melody has mid-length phrases throughout the form. Chords, seldom-used, are sparse -- intervals and single pitches are favored. It is performed using the yaniye scale and in the timafi rhythm.

• The speaker always should be delicate.
• Each thiliri always does the main melody and should be strong.
• The Festive Velvet has a well-defined multi-passage structure: a lengthy introduction, a lengthy first theme, an exposition of the first theme, a second theme, an exposition of the second theme and a synthesis of previous passages.
• In the introduction, each of the thiliri ranges from the muddy middle register to the shrill high register.
• In the first theme, each of the thiliri ranges from the watery low register to the muddy middle register. The passage should be performed using mordents.
• In the first exposition, each of the thiliri stays in the muddy middle register.
• In the second theme, each of the thiliri ranges from the muddy middle register to the shrill high register.
• In the second exposition, each of the thiliri stays in the watery low register. The passage should be performed using mordents.
• In the synthesis, each of the thiliri ranges from the muddy middle register to the shrill high register. The passage should be performed using mordents.
• Scales are constructed from twenty-four notes spaced evenly throughout the octave. The tonic note is fixed only at the time of performance.
• The yaniye hexatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords spanning a tritone and a perfect fourth. These chords are named ifife and fathinu.
• The ifife tetrachord is the 1st, the 6th, the 12th and the 13th degrees of the quartertone octave scale.
• The fathinu trichord is the 15th, the 16th and the 25th (completing the octave) degrees of the quartertone octave scale.
• The rhythm system is fundamentally polyrhythmic. There are always multiple rhythm lines, and each of their bars is played over the same period of time, regardless of the number of beats. The rhythm lines are thought of as one, without a primary-subordinate relationship, though individual lines can be named.
• The timafi rhythm is a single line with thirty-two beats divided into eight bars in a 4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4 pattern. The beat is stressed as follows:
• | x X x - | x - - x | x x - - | - - x x | x x ! - | - - x x | X - x x | X - x x |
• where ! marks the primary accent, X marks an accented beat, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.

Events