The Velvety Flutes

The Velvety Flutes is a form of music used for entertainment originating in The Admired Storms. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. Two speakers recite any composition of The Quiescence of Pondering while the music is played on a darala and one to five amafi. The musical voices bring melody with harmony. The entire performance is consistently slowing. The melody has phrases of varied length throughout the form. Chords, seldom-used, are sparse -- intervals and single pitches are favored. It is performed using the aweme scale and in the cuthefi rhythm. Throughout, when possible, performers are to make trills and match notes and syllables.

• Each speaker always should be passionate.
• The darala always should be spirited and uses mordents.
• Each amafi always does the main melody, should be delicate and locally improvises.
• The Velvety Flutes has the following structure: a theme and one to two series of variations on the theme possibly all repeated.
• The theme is voiced by the melody of the darala, the melody of the amafi and the speakers. The passage is to become louder and louder. Each of the amafi stays in the quavering high register.
• Each of the series of variations is voiced by the melody of the amafi, the harmony of the darala and the speakers. Each passage is to fade into silence. Each of the amafi stays in the nasal low register. Each passage should be performed using grace notes.
• Scales are conceived of as two chords built using a division of the perfect fourth interval into eleven notes. The tonic note is fixed only at the time of performance. Preferred notes in the fundamental scale are named. The names are thuna (spoken thu, 1st), arazi (ar, 4th), fidale (fi, 7th) and tarathe (ta, 9th).
• As always, the aweme hexatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords drawn from the fundamental division of the perfect fourth. These chords are named ifife and fathinu.
• The ifife trichord is the 1st, the 7th and the 11th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
• The fathinu tetrachord is the 1st, the 3rd, the 5th and the 11th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
• The cuthefi rhythm is a single line with four beats divided into two bars in a 2-2 pattern. The beats are named cede (spoken ce) and otoga (ot). The beat is stressed as follows:
• | x - | - x |
• where x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.

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