Verse:Hmøøh/Etsoj Jopah

Etsoj Jopah (Windermere: Etsoy Yopach; pseudonym Lothair Raeḋḃa; born fT 979 - fT 1056) was a Naquian author and philosopher. He's known for his contributions to Talman music theory.

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Personality

Traits: Outgoing and witty, and a little pedantic at times

Languages: Tizian (native), Naquian, Tseezh, Anbirese and Windermere (fluent), Tigol, Sowaár, and Thensarian (can read)

Biographical sketch

Jopah was born in fT 979 (18 years after the end of the Grouidite Revolution) in the village of Quintłopez (hwinSofeh) ...

Jopah went on to teach at various universities in both Talma and Naquiz. However, his ideas did not gather much influence in Naquiz.

Philosophical ideas

Talman culture

Jopah believed that ancient Talman science, philosophy, music and languages were in reality one, and all of them were simply lenses through which the human world and possibly even the physical world could be understood comprehensively. He often explored the interconnections between these different perspectives, interpreting facets of one discipline in terms of another.

The language of the Sondmorið Manuscripts, Tigol, with its rich phonetic and grammatical system provided him with lots of musical and philosophical ideas. He believed that Tigol was unique among Trician languages in that it had sounds articulated at three different points in the body: the lungs (séimhiú), the throat ("plain" consonants and vowels), and the nose (urú). Its grammar, Jopah believed, reflected an underlying action-oriented philosophy. A Tigol verb and its conjugation reflect the essence of the action described by it, and that the dominant languages spoken in his time, according to him, work too mechanically and fail to capture this essence.

His commentary on the story of the round table from the Ngăthoar foreshadowed the discovery of quarks. He wondered if perhaps, the atoms and particles that were know at the time are just combinations of other smaller particles acting in concert.

Contributions

Tuning theory

His Muiḋillechaḋ Gnaoth described a wide variety of just intonation tunings, including:

• eikosanies and other CPS's
• constant structures

Jopah's work laid the foundation for Talman music in the last three centuries.

It's remarkable that Jopah composed very little during his lifetime; only one piece of his survives, Dem·lathṁar an mbróŋae den cesand (meaning? should be a sentence). However, Jopah's poetry is very popular in modern Talma and has been set to music by quite a few composers; most notably the Clofabian composer Abediterol Benadryl.

Jopah's understanding of tuning was more metaphysical than practical. For example Jopah proposed a novel 31 tone scale:

1/1 64/63 21/20 16/15 35/32 10/9 8/7 7/6 6/5 128/105 5/4 80/63 21/16 4/3 48/35 45/32 64/45 35/24 3/2 32/21 63/40 8/5 512/315 5/3 12/7 7/4 9/5 64/35 15/8 40/21 63/32 2/1

in his commentary on Sondmorið which is directly influenced by the Tigol consonant system. The remarkable thing about this scale was that it consisted of 31 roughly equal divisions to the octave.

Works

• The Songbird: a play
• (a poetry anthology)
• A History of Vegetarianism
• Muiḋillechaḋ Gnaoth: a critical essay on the Sondmorið Manuscripts (in Amphirese)
• (motivational lectures); officially part of his The Songbird but often treated as a separate work
• The Anatomy of Song (I Vaidzónir Cáyya)
  • an analysis of the Naquian and Sjowaazheñ music of his time in terms of just intonation ratios
  • an analysis of Ancient Tseezh plays

Personal life

[Left as an exercise for the reader.]