Re: Musical conlangs (was: Poetique)

On Thursday, January 8, 2004, at 09:08 PM, jcowan@REUTERSHEALTH.COM wrote:

> Christophe Grandsire scripsit:
>
>>> Yes, so do I. Why Sudre didn't at least go from doh to the doh an octave
>>> above (like the Mercurians :))  I don't know.  But he didn't: only 'do'
>>> through to 'si' (i.e. ti in English).  The restricted range, apparently
>>> equal length notes, and all those pauses must surely have produced the
>>> most unmusical muslang imaginable,
>>
>> What do you expect from someone speaking a language with equal-syllable
>> length, non phonemic stress, and particularly unimaginative? (the
>> someone,
>> not the language ;)) )
Yep - one tends to forget the influence of the designer's L1 on his
auxlang;
I should've known better. After all, Volapük was designed by a German and
-
surprise, surprise - it has the three umlauted vowels & the four noun cases
of German; and good ol' Esperanto just reeks with the Slav phonology of its
author (not that I anything against Slav phonology per_se). So, yes, I
shouldn't
have been surprised by the equal length notes.

> I suspect the musical mapping of Solresol (and don't forget that the color
> and glyph mappings were also available)
I had forget - thanks for reminding me. In fact Gajewski's grammar lists
five
different methods of writing the language and 13 ways of communicating the
language.*

> was probably predicated by what you
> can do on the trumpet, which is why the language had some interest to the
> military.  Pauses, and restricting oneself to an octave, make good sense
> there.
You may wel1 be right.

*For those interested, the 5 methods of writing are:
1. to write each note as: do, ré, mu, fa, sol, la, si
2. To suppress the vowels, except the 'o' of 'sol' to distinguish it from
'si',
and write the notes thus: d, r, m, f, so, l, s.
[If Sudre had utilized the 'ti' rather than 'si', he could've used single
consonants for the all 7]
3. By writing the notes on a musical stave.
4. By using the digits 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (to represent do, ré, mu, fa,
sol, la, si
respectively.
(If he had included the upper do and started with 0, we could octal
numbers :-)
5. One can used special shorthand symbols ("on peut écrire en sténographi
spécial");
they are: do = circle; re = vertical bar; mi = semi-circle, a bit like the
set
intersection symbol; fa = back slash; sol = horizontal bar; la =
semi-circle, like
a sanserif C; si = forward slash.  When the symbols are written without
break,
they do indeed resemble shorthand of the Gregg or Pitman type.

The 13 methods of communications actually contain several variants of
the same thing.  They are:
1. Just speak it, i.e. if you want to say "it was raining", you just
_say_ (no singing) /dodo sisido/ (Note the pause after 'dodo')
2. You write it in one of the 5 methods described above.
3. You trace the shorthand signs in the air with your hand (this is called
"la language [sic] Universelle muette ou mimique").
4. You use your right to touch various points on your left hand for
each note (I can't show this in a email).
5. You make taps for each note: one tap for 'do', two taps for 're', three
taps for 'mi' etc.
6. You play the notes on a musical instrument.
7. You can communicate with a deaf person by taking her/his hand and
"lui press alternativement les doigts, comme pour la Langue Universelle
muette". [This seems to refer to (3), above. So quite how that works, I
don't know. It would seem to me better to have used (4), by pointing out
the places on the other person's hand]
8. A person signally from a window across a street, or a prisoner
signalling
from behind bars, can communicate by by using (3) above.
9. A sea, you can signal by using large signs with either the shorthand
symbols or the digits (4th method of writing.  At night the symbols could
be
luminous [duh!]
10. At sea one can use colored lights thus: red = do; orange = re; yellow
= mi;
green = fa; blue = sol; indigo = la; violet = si. As Professor Gajewski
points
out: "Ce sont les sept couleurs que l'on voit au rang dans un arc-en-ciel"
.
11. At night at sea one could fire colored flares according the colors
given
in (10).
12. Also at sea, one could play the notes "sur un instrument de musique
assez
puissant pour être entendu a la distance déterminée". [The mind boggles; as
the professor rightly observes: "on peut s'entendre parfaitement la nuit
comme
la jour."
13. Finally, at sea, can beat a drum, strike a bell, blow a whistle, blow
a
hunting horn (cor de chasse [on a boat??]), fire a pistol, a rifle or a
cannon [sic],
in the manner of the taps described in (5) above.

The thought of two ships communicating by firing off cannons in bursts of
one to
seven rounds at time for each syllable as they 'speak' to each other is
quite
something!


Ray
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