The Nutty Fisher-Berries

The Nutty Fisher-berries is a devotional form of music originating in The Straight Byword. 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 zapiv and two gofo. The musical voices bring melody and counterpoint. The entire performance should be made with feeling. The melody has long phrases, while the counterpoint has phrases of varied length throughout the form. It is performed using the furithali scale and in the inal rhythm. Throughout, when possible, composers and performers are to use grace notes and make trills.

• The Nutty Fisher-berries has the following structure: one to two passages and an additional passage possibly all repeated.
• Each of the first simple passages is voiced by the melody of the gofo, the counterpoint of the zapiv and the speaker reciting nonsensical words and sounds. Each passage is at a walking pace, and it is to be moderately soft. This passage is richly layered with full chords making use of the available range. Each passage should be composed and performed using rapid runs.
• The second simple passage is voiced by the melody of the zapiv, the counterpoint of the gofo and the speaker reciting nonsensical words and sounds. The passage is extremely fast, and it is to be moderately soft. 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. Every note is named. The names are pumdom (spoken pu), dos (do), aheda (ah), ofing (of), ujel (uj), bushcirne (bu), emsor (ems), naccak (na), vishages (vi), kungujith (ku) and udal (ud).
• As always, the furithali heptatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords drawn from the fundamental division of the perfect fourth. These chords are named ohural and ithut.
• The ohural tetrachord is the 1st, the 5th, the 7th and the 11th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
• The ithut tetrachord is the 1st, the 4th, the 6th and the 11th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
• The inal rhythm is a single line with thirty-two beats divided into eight bars in a 4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4 pattern. The beat is stressed as follows:
• | x - - - | - - x x | - - - x | x - x - | - x - x | - x - - | - x - - | - - x x |
• where x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.

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