The Sky-Blue of Impenitences

The Sky-blue of Impenitences is a devotional form of music directed toward the worship of Azweni the High Grimeling originating in The Race of Speech. 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 tilutdi. The musical voices are joined in melody. The entire performance is moderately paced, and it is to be very loud. The melody has long phrases throughout the form. It is performed using the xathrato scale and in the ciki rhythm.

• The tilutdi always does the main melody.
• The Sky-blue of Impenitences has a well-defined multi-passage structure: a theme and a lengthy series of variations on the theme possibly all repeated, a bridge-passage and a finale.
• The theme should sparkle. This passage features only melodic tones and intervals.
• The series of variations should feel mysterious. Only one pitch is ever played at a time in this passage.
• The bridge-passage should bring a sense of motion. Only one pitch is ever played at a time in this passage.
• The finale should be broad. This passage features only melodic tones and intervals.
• 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. After a scale is constructed, the root note of chords are named. The names are desle (spoken de) and pethrebinpu (pe).
• As always, the xathrato heptatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords drawn from the fundamental division of the perfect fourth. These chords are named equanamsespe and uwakri.
• The equanamsespe tetrachord is the 1st, the 4th, the 8th and the 11th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
• The uwakri tetrachord is the 1st, the 2nd, the 6th and the 11th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
• The ciki rhythm is a single line with thirty-two beats divided into four bars in a 8-8-8-8 pattern. The beat is stressed as follows:
• | x x - X x x x x | - x X x x x x - | - X - x - - x - | x - x x x X - - |
• where X marks an accented beat, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.

Events