MD3PAD 262-264

[Toby G Levy]

 vw#66: Dithyrambists - in ancient Greece, a dithyramb was an ecstatic
hymn to Dionysus, the god of fertility and wine. Thus, the
"Dithyrambists" would have been devotees of Dionysus; these days,
dithyramb is, according to Webster, "a sus. short poem in an inspired
wild irregular strain" or "a statement or writing in an exalted or
enthusiastic vein" (definition courtesy of the hyperarts Mason and Dixon
alpha).

        The debate on religion shifts to a debate on the evolution of
music. Euphrenia is concerned that there are too many new songs written
in B-flat major. Ethelmer and Tenebrae discuss the new form of music,
thirty-two measures, four stanzas, with the energy and tension as
primitive as the act of...Tenebrae is concerned that Ethelmer is going to
say sex, but he says he was thinking of the act of eating.

        Euphrenia asserts that "Mason and Dixon's West Line...shares
this quality of Departure and Return..."

        Uncle Ives is not convinced that new music is revolutionary.
But Ethelmer plays "The World Turned Upside Down" a song believed to
have been played at the surrender of Cornwallis at the end of the
Revolutionary war.  But the story of that song being played at that time
is apocryphal. Check out:

http://www.americanrevolution.org/upside.html

        Ethelmer the future of the music revolution lies in "the Negroe
Musick, the flatted Fifths..." which is a reference to one of the core
elements of jazz music a century and more in the future. Then Ethelmer
scans further into the future when he says how important the new music
is to him:

        "Is it not the very Rhythm of the Engines, the Clamor of the
Mills, the Rock of the Oceans, the Roll of the Drums of the Night, why
if one wish'd to give it a Name, --"
        "Surf Music!" DePugh cries.

        Ethelmer does not mind being made fun of. He says that someday
dePugh will be buying a guitar to play the new music and that Tenebrae
will dance to it at her wedding.

Toby