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Do countries like Verduria, Ismahi, Xurno and Dhekhnam have a national anthem ?

National anthems are quite a recent thing on Earth, I believe. I don't think many countries officially adopted them before the 19th century. Of course there will have been any number of unofficial patriotic ballads. Regiments would have their own anthems, like "The British Grenadiers".

Mornche Geddick wrote:National anthems are quite a recent thing on Earth, I believe. I don't think many countries officially adopted them before the 19th century. Of course there will have been any number of unofficial patriotic ballads. Regiments would have their own anthems, like "The British Grenadiers".

All GOOD CONWORLDING strives to emulate the 20th century western world, though.

I thought I had mentioned somewhere that Verduria's anthem is "Far above Eärdur's waters", but apparently not.

For Dhekhnam, let's see... "Who's that Gelálh"... "Workin' Gelálh"... "Gelálh Just Wants to Have Fun":.. OK, maybe not.

Considering Xurno, I would rather see a National Choregraphy over an anthem. It might include music and words, but the main part itself would be a dance.

Yiuel Raumbesranae wrote:Considering Xurno, I would rather see a National Choregraphy over an anthem. It might include music and words, but the main part itself would be a dance.

"I will teach to you the dance of my people"?

zompist wrote:I thought I had mentioned somewhere that Verduria's anthem is "Far above Eärdur's waters", but apparently not.

For Dhekhnam, let's see... "Who's that Gelálh"... "Workin' Gelálh"... "Gelálh Just Wants to Have Fun":.. OK, maybe not.

"Sharp Dressed Gelálh", perhaps?

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The dance bit does make sense for Xurno, as it's the queen of the arts.

Hmm, I'll have to decide if they've come up with a comprehensive dance notation. It would certainly be hard to have anything like an official dance without it.

zompist wrote:The dance bit does make sense for Xurno, as it's the queen of the arts.

Hmm, I'll have to decide if they've come up with a comprehensive dance notation. It would certainly be hard to have anything like an official dance without it.

For what it is worth, I would have expected Xurno to come up with notational representation for music as well.

As for a dance (choregraphy) notation, it would have to come with a dance theory (which they MUST have acquired by now, considering the whole level to which they pushed the damned art), with basic and modified movement for body parts. They'll come up with symbols for the various body parts and their movements. Note that while music is essentially bidimensional, dance is essentially tridimensional. But fortunately, logograms could form a basis on which a notational system could acquire depth, using the glyphs' internal composition as a third dimension.

An interesting result could be a basis for written notation of any sign language that would appear among deaf communities, which lead to many interesting unforeseen conworlding consequences.

Yiuel Raumbesranae wrote:

zompist wrote:The dance bit does make sense for Xurno, as it's the queen of the arts.

Hmm, I'll have to decide if they've come up with a comprehensive dance notation. It would certainly be hard to have anything like an official dance without it.

For what it is worth, I would have expected Xurno to come up with notational representation for music as well.

Well, it's certainly possible that the Xurnese come up with a notational representation for dance, but I don't think that's strictly necessary in order to institutionalise a national dance - it can also be taught, in schools, neighbourhood groups, dance clubs, or whatever kind of civic organisation Xurno would use for that, and for that one doesn't need notation, but only schooled teachers who hand on their knowledge and perhaps some kind of inspectors who ensures adherence to standards based on their own training.

We have tried to develop dance notation on Earth, as these ballroom dancing examples show: waltz, salsa and foxtrot. And there are a vast number of technical terms in ballet. But compared to classical musical notation it's all a bit primitive. The Xurnese must have something better.

hwhatting wrote:

Yiuel Raumbesranae wrote:

zompist wrote:The dance bit does make sense for Xurno, as it's the queen of the arts.

Hmm, I'll have to decide if they've come up with a comprehensive dance notation. It would certainly be hard to have anything like an official dance without it.

For what it is worth, I would have expected Xurno to come up with notational representation for music as well.

Well, it's certainly possible that the Xurnese come up with a notational representation for dance, but I don't think that's strictly necessary in order to institutionalise a national dance - it can also be taught, in schools, neighbourhood groups, dance clubs, or whatever kind of civic organisation Xurno would use for that, and for that one doesn't need notation, but only schooled teachers who hand on their knowledge and perhaps some kind of inspectors who ensures adherence to standards based on their own training.

We must consider a few things about Xurnese culture. And probably Xengiman culture in time as well. The Axunaic Classics set up a pattern quite clearly : the Axunemi liked standardization. While the Xurnese, especially Revaudo, are definitely NOT Axunemi, I believe I can still sense a tendency to get deep into scholarly studies, especially about arts. So a standard notation for dance is easily defendable for Xurno. Remember that dances are not only used for the National Dance of Xurno; you have so many religious dances that only that could of itself cause the Xurnese to reflect on such notation.

Yiuel Raumbesranae wrote:We must consider a few things about Xurnese culture. And probably Xengiman culture in time as well. The Axunaic Classics set up a pattern quite clearly : the Axunemi liked standardization. While the Xurnese, especially Revaudo, are definitely NOT Axunemi, I believe I can still sense a tendency to get deep into scholarly studies, especially about arts. So a standard notation for dance is easily defendable for Xurno. Remember that dances are not only used for the National Dance of Xurno; you have so many religious dances that only that could of itself cause the Xurnese to reflect on such notation.

I have no problem with that. But you can do standardisation without notation by instituting a system of strict, supervised teacher training; you cannot do standardisation of dances only with notation and no system of teaching and supervision - in our world, after all, most people are not able to teach themselves to play an intrument or to sing well only from sheets, without an instructor.

Another thought about the usefulness (or not) of dance notation. Sight reading is a lot easier if you're sitting down playing an instrument than when you're pirouetting around the floor!

The Axunemi attitude was "Let's write things down so we remember the perfect expression of this idea, after which that idea is settled."

The Xurnese attitude is "Let's write things down so we remember a particular expression of genius, which we expect students to laboriously imitate, before attempting to surpass it in middle age."

Hans-Werner is right that mentoring is a good substitute for a dance notation. But I think given the importance of dance for religious reasons, the Xurnese will have one. It probably doesn't hurt that they're used to a logographic system and thus have hundreds of graphemes to play with.

Mornche has a good point about sight reading. Still, one could memorize a 'dance phrase' and then practice it.

A dance notation would kind of inherently produce a division into the prototype of essence of the dance-- i.e. what's written down-- and the interpretation or accidence-- what's supplied by the performer.

Well I think we have it settled for the Xurnese