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artsyhonkerI am thinking about writing some music in toki pona, a constructed language designed to be easy to learn, and positive. So I put out a call for poetry...
Some people on Mastodon seemed enthusiastic about the idea, too.
One of them (@kensanata@octodon.social) suggested Brahms's Requiem but in toki pona. Now, I'm not Brahms, and I daresay the scansion wouldn't work, but I love the idea of taking selections from Brahms's choice of text and using that for a new composition or cycle of compositions, since he was choosing texts from a vernacular source.
For example:
ona li pona pi ona li pona ala tan jan pona li ona
is, apparently, Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted. This would actually work well as a stand-alone piece, possibly in a macaronic setting with the Vulgate Latin (or indeed Luther's German), possibly not.
Another obvious idea would be Christmas carols, and these could be quite fun.
@RussSharek@mastodon.art is interested in "exploring either a "be good" mythology or something uniquely derived", and also in the idea of telling some new stories in song.
I think that's most of the preliminary ideas, now in one place so I don't lose them. Please feel free to comment with more or let me know if I've missed something.
I probably can't give much actual composing time to this until around June, unless I end up with some texts that work well as warm-up exercises for me (and even then it's dicey). That means plenty of tme to let the ideas roll around in my head.
My practice is to release my choral music under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license (CC by-SA), so it's really helpful to me if any translations use either that license or a more permissive one.
Comments welcome; you should be able to make anonymous ones if you're not on DW, in which case please identify yourself in some way -- or sign up for a Dreamwidth account, of course.
Some people on Mastodon seemed enthusiastic about the idea, too.
One of them (@kensanata@octodon.social) suggested Brahms's Requiem but in toki pona. Now, I'm not Brahms, and I daresay the scansion wouldn't work, but I love the idea of taking selections from Brahms's choice of text and using that for a new composition or cycle of compositions, since he was choosing texts from a vernacular source.
For example:
ona li pona pi ona li pona ala tan jan pona li ona
is, apparently, Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted. This would actually work well as a stand-alone piece, possibly in a macaronic setting with the Vulgate Latin (or indeed Luther's German), possibly not.
Another obvious idea would be Christmas carols, and these could be quite fun.
@RussSharek@mastodon.art is interested in "exploring either a "be good" mythology or something uniquely derived", and also in the idea of telling some new stories in song.
I think that's most of the preliminary ideas, now in one place so I don't lose them. Please feel free to comment with more or let me know if I've missed something.
I probably can't give much actual composing time to this until around June, unless I end up with some texts that work well as warm-up exercises for me (and even then it's dicey). That means plenty of tme to let the ideas roll around in my head.
My practice is to release my choral music under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license (CC by-SA), so it's really helpful to me if any translations use either that license or a more permissive one.
Comments welcome; you should be able to make anonymous ones if you're not on DW, in which case please identify yourself in some way -- or sign up for a Dreamwidth account, of course.
naugeleh dreams of madrigals
Date: 2018-01-23 06:17 pm (UTC)Re: naugeleh dreams of madrigals
Date: 2018-01-23 06:24 pm (UTC)@RussSharek said:
"Translate the lyrics to Smile, which is set to music by Chaplin, into toki pona and then arrange as a madrigal.
I'm not so worried about keeping the melody intact as the message.
'sinpin pona' is good or happy face."
I like this idea a lot!
Re: naugeleh dreams of madrigals
Date: 2018-01-23 06:55 pm (UTC)Please see https://jan-lope.github.io/Toki_Pona_lessons_English/
Re: naugeleh dreams of madrigals
Date: 2018-01-23 06:58 pm (UTC)Thanks! I still have a lot to learn.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-24 06:38 am (UTC)