The Rhythmic Citron

The Rhythmic Citron is a form of music used to commemorate important events 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 chanter recites nonsensical words and sounds while the music is played on a opnarathok, a xuthi and a zosmo. The musical voices cover melody, harmony and rhythm. The entire performance is to be moderately loud. The melody has long phrases throughout the form. Pitches are densely packed in clusters as music moves from chord to chord. It is performed using the vuthrilsim scale and in the ijaspugolet rhythm. Throughout, when possible, composers and performers are to add fills and play staccato.

• The chanter always does harmony and should bring a sense of motion. The voice stays in the high register.
• The opnarathok always provides the rhythm and should build as the performance proceeds.
• The xuthi always does the main melody and should be grand. The muddy voice uses its entire range.
• The zosmo always provides the rhythm and should be grand.
• The Rhythmic Citron has a simple structure: three to four unrelated passages.
• Each of the simple passages is consistently slowing.
• 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 vuthrilsim hexatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords drawn from the fundamental division of the perfect fourth. These chords are named mushast and oruslumcopo.
• The mushast trichord is the 1st, the 5th and the 11th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
• The oruslumcopo tetrachord is the 1st, the 5th, the 6th and the 11th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
• The ijaspugolet rhythm is made from two patterns: the oquil (considered the primary) and the ujel. The patterns are to be played over the same period of time, concluding together regardless of beat number.
• The oquil rhythm is a single line with twenty beats divided into five bars in a 4-4-4-4-4 pattern. The beats are named bokem (spoken bo), inal (in), warosp (wa) and vope (vo). The beat is stressed as follows:
• | x - - - | - - x - | x - - - | x ! - x | x - X x |
• where ! marks the primary accent, X marks an accented beat, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
• The ujel rhythm is a single line with eight beats divided into two bars in a 4-4 pattern. The beats are named bushcirne (spoken bu), emsor (ems), naccak (na) and vishages (vi). The beat is stressed as follows:
• | - x - - | x - - - |
• where x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.

Events