Etsoj Jopah (pseudonym Lothair Raeḋḃa) was a Naquian author and philosopher. He's known for his contributions to Talman music theory.

Todo

Need more Snialism

one story could involve a precocious child
she's asked the question, in a round table of six people "how many of us are there"
everyone is asked that question
while most of them are busy counting, she responds with this:
"63: 6 individuals, 15 teams of two, 20 teams of 3, etc."
that could be a story in the ngăthoar
and then a wise old man counters, well, how many more people will be there if another one enters
and the kid responds, we have all our old teams, as well as a new set of teams with the new person added
the pascal recurrence
one snialist (possibly jopah) could point out that the kid's figure of 63 came from an idealist mindset where there was no conflict
otherwise, the value would go down
and CS's perhaps embody peace in that way

Post-Gariad, post-war

Personality

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

Languages: Tizian (native), Sjowaazheñ, Eevo, Anvirese and Rhythoed (fluent), Tigol, Tamil, Windermere and Thensarian (can read)

Biographical sketch

Jopah was born in the village of Quintłopetł ...

Jopah went on to teach at various universities in both Talma and Naquiz.

Philosophical ideas

Jopah believed that ancient Talman science, philosophy, music and languages were unified, 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 Tigol language 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.

Contributions

Tuning theory

His (commentary on Sondmorið) 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. In particular, his work on constant structures inspired Rhooc Askuucis's subsequent work on equal temperaments.

It's remarkable that Jopah composed very little during his lifetime; only one piece of his survives, Tłüa thrăhoy id-Eal mi-Wă'ech (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
[some windermere compound word]: a critical essay on the Sondmorið Manuscripts
(motivational lectures); officially part of his The Songbird but often treated as a separate work
The Anatomy of Song; which included an analysis of the Naquian music of his time in terms of just intonation ratios

Verse:Hmøøh/Etsoj Jopah

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