The Silks of Sparkling

The Silks of Sparkling is a form of music used during marches and military engagements originating in The Lantern of Nails. The rules of the form are applied by composers to produce individual pieces of music which can be performed. A speaker recites nonsensical words and sounds while the music is played on a ekast and two kadol. The musical voices bring melody and counterpoint. The entire performance is very slow. The melody has mid-length phrases, while the counterpoint has long phrases throughout the form. The music is broadly layered with chords spanning the range. It is performed without preference for a scale and in the thoth rhythm. Throughout, when possible, composers and performers are to locally improvise.

• The speaker always should be spirited.
• The ekast always does the counterpoint melody and should feel mournful.
• Each kadol always does the main melody and should be stately.
• The Silks of Sparkling has a well-defined multi-passage structure: a verse and a chorus all repeated one times, a lengthy bridge-passage and a finale.
• The verse is to be very loud.
• The chorus is to become softer and softer.
• The bridge-passage is to be very loud.
• The finale is to be soft.
• The thoth rhythm is a single line with sixteen beats divided into eight bars in a 2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2 pattern. The beats are named thatthil (spoken tha) and gostang (go). The beat is stressed as follows:
• | x x | x - | - x | - x | x - | - x | x - | x x |
• where x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.

Events