The Monarchical Contingencies
The Monarchical Contingencies is a devotional form of music directed toward the worship of Sotithis the Attendant Ennoblement originating in The Straight Byword. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. A chanter recites nonsensical words and sounds. The entire performance should sparkle, and it is to fade into silence. The melody has short phrases throughout the form. Only one pitch is ever played at a time. It is performed using the uwakri scale and in the bokem rhythm. Throughout, when possible, performers are to use grace notes, play rapid runs and alternate tension and repose.
- The chanter always does the main melody. The voice ranges from the middle register to the high register.
- The Monarchical Contingencies has the following structure: a passage and an additional passage.
- The first simple passage is moderately paced.
- The second simple passage is at a hurried pace.
- 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 uwakri pentatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords drawn from the fundamental division of the perfect fourth. These chords are named ohug and oruslumcopo.
- The ohug trichord is the 1st, the 9th and the 11th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
- The oruslumcopo trichord is the 1st, the 7th and the 11th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
- The bokem rhythm is a single line with thirty-two beats divided into four bars in a 7-6-11-8 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 |
- where X marks an accented beat, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
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