The Spathe of Macadamia-Nuts
The Spathe of Macadamia-nuts is a form of music used to commemorate important events originating in The Judgemental Confederation. The rules of the form are applied by composers to produce individual pieces of music which can be performed. A chanter recites any composition of The Fallopian Chicken. The entire performance should feel agitated and becomes frenzied as it proceeds. Only one pitch is ever played at a time. It is performed using the ibalarek scale.
- The chanter always does the main melody.
- The Spathe of Macadamia-nuts has the following structure: an introduction and three to four unrelated passages.
- In the introduction, the chanter's voice covers its entire range. The passage has phrases of varied length in the melody. The passage is performed in the uthrogumat rhythm.
- In each of the simple passages, the chanter's voice ranges from the middle register to the high register. Each passage has mid-length phrases in the melody. Each passage is performed in the ofing rhythm.
- 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. Preferred notes in the fundamental scale are named. The names are vuthrilsim (spoken vu, 2nd), desle (de, 4th) and pethrebinpu (pe, 11th).
- As always, the ibalarek heptatonic 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 tetrachord is the 1st, the 5th, the 6th and the 11th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
- The oruslumcopo tetrachord is the 1st, the 3rd, the 5th and the 11th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
- The uthrogumat rhythm is a single line with four beats. The beats are named sorot (spoken so), pumdom (pu), dos (do) and aheda (ah). The beat is stressed as follows:
- | x x - x |
- where x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
- The ofing rhythm is a single line with sixteen beats divided into eight bars in a 2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2 pattern. The beat is stressed as follows:
- | - x | - x | x - | - x'| x x | - x | - x | - x |
- where ' marks a beat as late, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
Events