The Ash of Expiries

The Ash of Expiries is a devotional form of music directed toward the worship of Tiq the Crematorium of Poison originating in The Liberty of Lieges. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. The music is played on a doqe, a jeq and three iqok. The musical voices bring melody, counterpoint and rhythm. The melody has short phrases, while the counterpoint has long phrases throughout the form. Never more than an interval sounds at once. It is performed in free rhythm. Throughout, when possible, performers are to add fills.

• The doqe always provides the rhythm. The voice uses its entire range from the crisp low register to the heavy high register.
• The jeq always does the main melody.
• Each iqok always does the counterpoint melody. The voice ranges from the rich low register to the dark middle register.
• The Ash of Expiries has a simple structure: three to four unrelated passages.
• Each of the simple passages should evoke tears and is consistently slowing, and it is to become softer and softer. Each passage is performed using the ahdid scale.
• 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. Every note is named. The names are piaki (spoken pia), edo (ed), dodap (do), qahpa (qa), oqua (oq), ej (ej), at (at), iadok (iad), poqin (po), oti (ot) and nuod (nuo).
• As always, the ahdid pentatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords drawn from the fundamental division of the perfect fourth. These chords are named if and axod.
• The if trichord is the 1st, the 5th and the 11th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
• The axod trichord is the 1st, the 5th and the 11th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.

Events