The Petal of Venerating
The Petal of Venerating is a form of music used for entertainment originally devised by the elf Nemile Naturalwaded. The rules of the form are applied by composers to produce individual pieces of music which can be performed. The music is played on two to five mirise and a niceci. The musical voices bring melody with harmony. The melody has short phrases throughout the form. Chords, seldom-used, are sparse -- intervals and single pitches are favored. It is performed using the aro scale and in the emu rhythm. Throughout, when possible, composers and performers are to locally improvise and play arpeggios.
- Each mirise always does harmony and should feel playful. The voice uses its entire range from the strident low register to the shrill high register.
- The niceci always does the main melody and should be merry.
- The Petal of Venerating has a simple structure: three to five unrelated passages.
- Each of the simple passages accelerates as it proceeds, and it is to be moderately soft. Each passage should be composed and performed using mordents. Each passage should sometimes include a falling-rising melody pattern with sharpened sixth degree on the rise as well as staccato.
- Scales are constructed from twenty-four notes dividing the octave. In quartertones, their spacing is roughly 1xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxO, where 1 is the tonic, O marks the octave and x marks other notes. The tonic note is a fixed tone passed from teacher to student. After a scale is constructed, notes are named according to degree. The names are fathinu (spoken fa), thili (thi), fomire (fo), fela (fe), aweme (aw) and yaniye (ya).
- The aro hexatonic scale is constructed by selection of degrees from the fundamental scale. The degrees selected are the 1st, the 5th, the 10th, the 13th, the 19th and the 21st.
- The emu rhythm is a single line with four beats. The beat is stressed as follows:
- | - x'x X |
- where X marks an accented beat, ' marks a beat as late, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
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