Paksworld

Yesterday was complicated by my first voice lesson with our choir director, and then came supper and then came choir practice, so by the time I got home (sometime after 10 pm) I was not in any state to write.  However, on the way home I thought about the music in the Paks books and the new ones.

All cultures have music of one sort or another, and music is important to me, so when I was writing the original books,  I was listening to music (actual records played on an actual stereo–it was that long ago) and music got into the books.  Had to be in the books.   I wrote some of the songs the soldiers sang, words and music (I’m a very poor composer, but I can sometimes write a catchy little tune.)   Unfortunately for posterity, those notes are among the stuff that’s missing–not thrown out, I’m reasonably sure, but packed away in a box.  What box?  That’s the problem.

Anyway,  it occurred to me on the way home from the city last night that I haven’t discussed the musical range in the various cultures, and you might enjoy learning about it.

Vocal:  the people sing a lot if they feel like it.   Since there’s no recording, ordinary people aren’t inhibited by comparison to professionals,  and they sing in their daily lives as naturally as children still do (or some children still do.)    Someone kneading bread, someone bringing in the cows for milking, someone weeding a garden or scything a field…if they have extra breath they may well be singing.

There’s a lot of group singing.   Soldiers on the march sing.   Girdish yeomen sing, both the equivalent of hymns and mnemonic songs intended to help them learn Girdish history…in fact, mnemonic songs are fairly common (weavers chant-sing patterns: “Over two, under three, that’s the trunk of the tree…”)   Some groups tend to sing in unison, or with only one “leader” singing a phrase the others then repeat, but others allow/encourage individually improvised “harmonies.”   (Sometimes it’s harmony, sometimes it’s not.  They’re singing for their own pleasure, not to an imposed standard.)

Competition for both individual and group singers exists mostly in cities, though when people from different villages meet it’s common for them to sing at each other, and then join voices.    In Aarenis, at one of the big festivals, the singing competition even includes a division for soldiers’ songs, at which different mercenary companies enter their best singer, who must sing a song approved by the judges.   (The rules are stricter now after a Golden Company soldier sang a version of “The Vonja Militia” that started a riot.  If I could find the !**! box,  I’d post that unpublished  story on the website.  It was one of the side-stories that came out of the original books.)

Instrumental music accompanies singers or dancers more than it’s used alone.   Instruments found in small villages and farmsteads are homemade, usually of wood, reeds, other easily-found materials.   Panpipes, wooden and reed flutes blown across,  long wooden tubes blown into directly,  drums (made variously),  gourds dried with the seeds inside and shaken,  fairly crude stringed instruments, some plucked and some bowed.   In some areas bagpipe equivalents are made, but more like the Irish than the Scottish pipes.    There’s a wobbly, liquid quality to the sound.  Nobody has a proper pitch pipe–the village’s strongest singer will just start, and the instruments and other singers make their own way into the music.    If musicians from several villages come together, there’s small chance the instruments will tune the same.

Drums: drums made with skin require special rituals in both making and playing  to avoid being considered a call to evil spirits.   (And so followers of Liart beat their drums without those rituals…a Liartian drum cannot be played by a non-Liartian–it must be destroyed with great care for the skin element.)    As the skin came off a once-living creature, both the method of that creature’s death and the handling of the skin matter.   Respect for the creature whose skin it was,  and apologies to the Lady of Peace for blood shed are both necessary.   Drummers must blood a new drum as farmers blood the spade in spring, in recognition of the animal’s sacrifice of its skin.   This is not necessary with the drums that do not use skin.

In larger towns and cities, where more musical groups exist and also more skilled craftspersons who can spend all day every day making musical instruments, you’d find more variety.   Stringed instruments include harps, from small “hand harps” to lap harps and the much rarer “great harp.”   Instruments equivalent to our lute, guitar, and fiddle offer a range of tones.   Breath-based  instruments (woodwinds and brass sections)  exist, with instrument makers adding new types from time to time.    The wealthy in cities often have hired musicians on call–some even in house–to play during meals (especially formal meals when impressing the guests matters.)    They may also play instruments themselves–music being considered a suitable accomplishment for both men and women.   Music may be used as a political weapon, often putting new words to a familiar tune, so the public will pick it up quickly:  (“You know the Duke of Immer…grew up a pirate lad…he learned his manners on a ship, and all of them were bad…bad, bad, bad, bad, all of them were bad…”)  or as a celebration of some current event, etc.

Military music (as separate from what soldiers sing in camp) isn’t that different from pre-electricity military music.   Drums, fifes, trumpets, etc.

Bells are a special case.  Of course there are small bells–cows and sheep may wear bells…the mellow clonking of cowbells and the “bell-wether” falls sweetly on the afternoon air in summer.    In some areas, tiny bells or “wind chime” like bells are hung in the belief that the wind-sprites accept the sound as prayers.    Glass/crystal bells may be used in wealthy/royal houses to signal the courses of dinner.  Larger bells, hard to cast and manage,  are found only in cities, among humans, but elves favor bells of all sizes and have created magical bells whose sound is said to create enchantment.  The famous “silver bells of Verella” were a gift of elves (it is said, anyway) and they are magical, ringing out in both warning and celebration even when no one touches them or their ropes.   Though bells can be tuned, they are never (in that world) used to play tunes.

So…if you imagine yourself in Verella at midday, the chiming of the Bells would suddenly ring out over the other music in the city–it’s a noisy city anyway, as most cities are, but there are the chants of craftspersons at work or teaching apprentices, the chants of street merchants, some more musical than others,  a work crew’s chant as it unloads a ship or wagon or moves anything heavy  (think “Song of the Volga Boatmen…) , children singing game songs,  someone in a house you pass singing to a child, someone else singing a song to raise bread,  a luthier tuning an instrument,  etc.   Out beyond the city wall, heading toward the next village, you’d hear the cowbells  (not that many sheep right around Verella),  someone mending a wall or fence, singing not-very-tunefully,  travelers singing to pass the time.

If you were invited to a meal at a rich nobleman’s house,  you’d expect music after dinner, if not during it.   It might be simple (family members playing an instrument or two, everyone singing along) or elaborate (individual or group performances the guests listen to without joining in.    In inns and taverns, there’d be group singing, usually with an instrumental accompaniment, and everyone would join in the choruses, at least.

It’s a world full of music, and that’s only part of it.

Meanwhile, I have homework from my voice teacher:  we’re embarked on the great experiment (from my POV) of seeing whether I can unlearn a lot of bad habits picked up from years of singing without any instruction at all.