Lex

This song explores the relationship between linguistic dependencies and musical dependencies.

Accompaniment

A linguistic dependency is already clearly defined. But what’s a musical dependency? There are many different ways we could think about this concept.

For the sake of simplicity, I chose linear precedence. The floating staff at the beginning of the score defines the set of musical dependencies for this song.

C G D A C# E G# Eb Bb F

C is the head. G depends on C. D depends on G. A depends on D. And so on.

This piece uses the linguistic dependency structure of the Greek version of Luke 11:2-4 (the Our Father prayer) as its musical skeleton. The musical row is made up entirely of 3rds and 4ths because the prayer has 3^4 = 81 syllables.

I first mapped out each Greek sentence’s syntactic dependencies. I then translated each grammatical dependency into its corresponding musical dependency. For example, the first sentence becomes:

Πάτερ (rest), ἁγιασθήτω (C) τὸ (D) ὄνομά (G) σου (D)

The vocative Πάτερ is represented musically as silence, since it has no relationship to the dependency structure of the rest of the sentence. The verb ἁγιασθήτω (let be sanctified) is the head. The noun ὄνομά (name) depends on the verb ἁγιασθήτω. The article τὸ (the) and the adjective σου (your) both depend on ὄνομά.

To increase musical variety, the “head note” of the next sentence (ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου) is A. It begins where the previous sentence leaves off. This ensures that all ten tones in the row are used.

The Greek text also determined the meter. The musical duration of each word is its number of morae divided by its number of syllables.

* Πάτερ = 3 morae / 2 syllables = 1.5 beats
* ἁγιασθήτω = 8 morae / 5 syllables = 1.6 beats
* τὸ = 1 mora / 1 syllable = 1 beat
* ὄνομά = 3 morae / 3 syllables = 1 beat
* σου = 2 morae / 1 syllable = 2 beats

I approximated complex fractions as best I could with 8th and 16th notes.

The entire derivation process is coded in this python script.

Voice

With such a complex accompaniment, I kept the voice harmonically simple and in a predictable rhythm. It alternates between different inversions of {B F#}, the two notes that were not used in the musical dependency relation.

Finally, the vowels of the printed lyrics are in a palindrome. They are a structural representation of the “law” in the title.

[ɑ] [i] [æ] [ɪ] [ɔ] [ʊ] [ʌ] [u] [ɛ] [ɛ] [u] [ʌ] [ʊ] [ɔ] [ɪ][ æ] [i] [ɑ]

The score, as well as all the python and lilypond code I used, can be found here.

posted by mxcollins (1 comment total)

This is very nice. You have chosen to illuminate a well-known text in ways that I doubt anyone else would have ever thought of doing. You found (created?) structures and a way to translate them musically that while arbitrary feel entirely natural and justified. The musical result is quite good with the texturally simple yet rhythmically complex accompaniment contrasting nicely with the rhythmically simple voice part. It's extremely rare to find such a thin accompaniment but I think it works really well here. It places emphasis on the words but because of the complex rhythm the accompaniment is not lost. A really cool effect.
posted by bfootdav at 2:03 PM on July 4, 2015