The Blossom of Silkiness

The Blossom of Silkiness is a devotional form of music originating in The Fortunate Confederacy. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. A speaker recites nonsensical words and sounds while the music is played on a shodec and a theni. The music is melody and rhythm without harmony. The entire performance should feel mysterious. The melody has mid-length phrases throughout the form. Never more than an interval sounds at once. It is performed using the use scale and in the othag rhythm. Throughout, when possible, performers are to syncopate.

• The shodec always does the main melody.
• The theni always provides the rhythm.
• The Blossom of Silkiness has a well-defined multi-passage structure: a lengthy theme, a lengthy exposition of the theme and a recapitulation of the theme.
• The theme gradually slows as it comes to an end, and it is to be very loud. The shodec stays in the fragile high register.
• The exposition gradually slows as it comes to an end, and it is to be very soft. The shodec covers its entire range from the raspy low register to the fragile high register.
• The recapitulation is moderately paced, and it is to be moderately soft. The shodec stays in the raspy low register.
• Scales are constructed from twenty-one notes dividing the octave. In quartertones, their spacing is roughly 1xxx-xxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxxxO, where 1 is the tonic, O marks the octave and x marks other notes. The tonic note is fixed only at the time of performance.
• The use hexatonic scale is constructed by selection of degrees from the fundamental scale. The degrees selected are the 1st, the 5th, the 7th, the 15th, the 18th and the 21st.
• 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 othag rhythm is a single line with two beats. The beat is stressed as follows:
• | - x`|
• where ` marks a beat as early, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.

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