The Starveling Maggot

The Starveling Maggot is a devotional form of music directed toward the worship of Rangus Urnexpiry originating in The Diagonal Sea-Monster. The rules of the form are applied by composers to produce individual pieces of music which can be performed. A singer recites nonsensical words and sounds while the music is played on a omusmagu. The musical voices join in melody, counterpoint and harmony. The entire performance should feel mournful. The counterpoint melody has short phrases throughout the form. It is performed using the ozzok scale and in the obst rhythm. Throughout, when possible, composers and performers are to make trills.

• The omusmagu always plays rapid runs.
• The Starveling Maggot has a well-defined multi-passage structure: a lengthy introduction and a theme and a series of variations on the theme.
• The introduction is voiced by the melody of the omusmagu and the counterpoint of the singer reciting The Golden-beryl of Red-beryls. The passage is at a free tempo, and it is to become louder and louder. The singer's voice stays in the low register. The passage has short phrases in the melody. Only one pitch is ever played at a time in this passage.
• The theme is voiced by the melody of the omusmagu and the counterpoint of the singer reciting The Golden-beryl of Red-beryls. The passage is twice the tempo of the last passage, and it is to become louder and louder. The singer's voice stays in the middle register. The passage has mid-length phrases in the melody. Only one pitch is ever played at a time in this passage.
• The series of variations is voiced by the melody of the singer reciting The Golden-beryl of Red-beryls and the harmony of the omusmagu. The passage is very slow, and it is to fade into silence. The singer's voice covers its entire range. The passage has phrases of varied length in the melody. This passage features only melodic tones and intervals.
• Scales are constructed from eighteen notes dividing the octave. In quartertones, their spacing is roughly 1x-xxx-xx-x-xxxxxx-xx-xxO, where 1 is the tonic, O marks the octave and x marks other notes. The tonic note is fixed only at the time of performance. After a scale is constructed, notes are named according to degree. The names are bagurod (spoken ba), sastospu (sa), assna (as), xuzestra (xu), roxstat (ro), tekug (te) and odo (od).
• The ozzok heptatonic scale is constructed by selection of degrees from the fundamental scale. The degrees selected are the 1st, the 4th, the 5th, the 7th, the 9th, the 10th and the 13th.
• The obst rhythm is a single line with four beats. The beat is stressed as follows:
• | - - - x |
• where x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.

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