The Vinous Chant

The Vinous Chant is a form of music used for entertainment originating in The Faded Petticoat. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. A speaker recites nonsensical words and sounds while the music is played on a asost. The musical voices are joined in melody. The entire performance is consistently slowing. The melody has short phrases throughout the form. The music is broadly layered with chords spanning the range. The music repeats for as long as necessary. It is performed using the vallal scale and in free rhythm. Throughout, when possible, performers are to make trills and alternate tension and repose.

• The speaker always should be delicate.
• The asost always does the main melody and should be spirited.
• The Vinous Chant has a well-defined multi-passage structure: a lengthy introduction and a theme, a bridge-passage and one to two series of variations on the theme.
• The introduction is to be loud.
• The theme is to be in whispered undertones.
• The bridge-passage is to start loud then be immediately soft.
• Each of the series of variations is to be moderately loud.
• Scales are constructed from twenty-three notes dividing the octave. In quartertones, their spacing is roughly 1xxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxO, 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.
• The vallal heptatonic scale is constructed by selection of degrees from the fundamental scale. The degrees selected are the 1st, the 4th, the 6th, the 9th, the 13th, the 16th and the 20th.

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