The Play of Poetry

The Play of Poetry is a form of music used to commemorate important events originating in The Wild Seasons. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. The music is played on a malatha. The entire performance is to fade into silence. The melody has short phrases throughout the form. Chords, seldom-used, are sparse -- intervals and single pitches are favored. Throughout, when possible, performers are to make trills and alternate tension and repose.

• The malatha always does the main melody and should be passionate. The voice uses its entire range from the buzzy low register to the strident high register.
• The Play of Poetry has a simple structure: a passage.
• The simple passage slows and broadens. The passage is performed using the fena scale and in the aveya rhythm.
• Scales are constructed from twenty-four notes spaced evenly throughout the octave. The tonic note is fixed only at the time of performance.
• The fena hexatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords spanning a tritone and a perfect fourth. These chords are named datha and fathinu.
• The datha tetrachord is the 1st, the 8th, the 10th 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 aveya rhythm is made from two patterns: the aratha (considered the primary) and the cuthefi. As stated above, they are to be played in polyrhythm.
• The aratha rhythm is a single line with twenty-five beats divided into five bars in a 5-5-5-5-5 pattern. The beats are named imeri (spoken im), thuna (thu), arazi (ar), fidale (fi) and tarathe (ta). The beat is stressed as follows:
• | 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.
• The cuthefi rhythm is a single line with four beats. The beats are named cede (spoken ce), otoga (ot), dinade (di) and ele (el). The beat is stressed as follows:
• | x - - - |
• where x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.

Events