#Music on Toril: apparently a grab bag of genres where the 1400s and the 70s collided

[y-rhywbeth2]

Lore: Music

Link: Disclaimer regarding D&D "canon" & Index [tldr: D&D lore is a giant conflicting mess. Larian's lore is also a conflicting mess. There's a lot of lore; I don't know everything. You learn to take what you want and leave the rest]

Useful for bards and priests, one assumes. I had to look up so many songs I'd never heard of to have a clue what half the comparisons were...

Musical education in the Realms (plus what the core Colleges (Lore and Valor) translate to in the Realms (where they aren't called that))

Musical vocabulary

Instruments

Music itself, including: operatic, 'symphonic'-ish, renaissance-style, hymns, 70s folk bands, and 70s rock music. [Popular music | Hymns | Opera | Demihuman traditions] (we got music that sounds like Leonard Cohen, Sinéad O'Connor, 70s folk music, 50s folk music, ELO, Genesis...)

Education

The majority of trained musicians, including bards, start off being apprenticed to accomplished bards willing to tutor, and some seek out Bardic Colleges. The exact focus, quality and curriculum varies by the institution.

To be admitted one must have some experience performing, and be able to pass an audition. They will perform before one of the master bards of the college, as well as one 'invisible' listener they're unaware of. Both masters must agree that the candidate is worth teaching or not for admission, if they don't agree further auditions will follow until they do agree on a verdict.

'Low-order' colleges generally concentrate on mastery of pitch, timbre and nuance. Students are taught to sing scales and perfectly duplicate overheard notes and tunes with their voice, as well as memorizing a set of tunes on a range of instruments to familiarise themselves with different keys and methods. The crafting and repair of one form of instrument is also part of the training.

'High-order' colleges offer a wider range of instruments and repertoire, teaching the history behind the music and lyrics, as well as some language tutoring - not necessarily to speak the language, but to be able to sing such songs perfectly.

New students to any college will be taught the basics in classes at first, but very soon will be passed onto a tutor for one-on-one tutoring.

Pretty much all official colleges in the Realms would make you a College of Lore bard in core DnD terms.

What is called The College of Valor does not actually involve colleges, and is found amongst warrior cultures like Orcs or the Illuskan Northmen, Uthgardt and Reghed: skalds - warrior poets, lorekeepers and clan storytellers.

The most prestigious colleges are the College of Fochlucan in Silverymoon, an ancient bardic tradition which I assume from the name is supposed to be from Ffolk tradition (the Moonshaes). This college has close ties to the Harpers, though most members will stress that their mission and activities are separate to avoid being targeted by the Harpers' enemies.

The College of the Herald is also found in Silverymoon and was founded by a Harper in 922 DR to preserve history. The college maintains a strict neutrality towards the conflicts of the world, and its focus is on preservation of history, folklore and legend over music.

The College of New Olamn, once Ollamh, another ancient bardic tradition, is in Waterdeep, established in 1366 by wealthy patrons of the arts.

On a less formal level, priests of Milil are charged with spreading music and teaching as many as possible to play and sing, and followers of EIlistraee are to 'nurture beauty, music, the craft of making musical instruments, and song wherever they find it.'

Vernacular

'Minstrelsy' is a term for live music, not including hymns and holy music. Recorded music does exist, though mostly in the form of spells that exist to capture and play the song back on command. People like to use them for study, meditation, fun, etc. If you don't have access to magic, due to cost or general mistrust of the stuff, the Gondians have invented music boxes. You can also get those jewellery boxes with the spinning dancer that play music when they open.

A 'song' is monophonic performance or piece, consisting pof a single vocalist with no instrumental accompaniment.

'Allsong' is the term for polyphonic pieces; covering vocals with instrumental accompaniment, multiple singers such as choirs, and orchestras.

'Newclang' is recent music that starts playing with or breaking conventions. May be viewed as a brilliant invention or modern pop garbage, depending on your tastes.

'song-cycles': 'extended stories told by ballads being sung in a particular sequence. Most of these are 'later inventions,' concocted by a minstrel or bard stringing together their personal favourites (or tunes that they could perform well, and that were popular with paying audiences) into a story of sorts, and then knitting them together with altered lyrics, additional linking songs, and sometimes short spoken-word orations, into the tale of one hero's life, or a romance, or the reign of a villainous king, or the saga of a fearsome dragon or other predatory monster (and its eventual defeat).'

If the performance is 'wordless' then there are no sung lyrics. There might be vocalisations along with the music, but as per the name, no words.

The concept of sorting music into genres apparently hasn't much occurred to anybody yet; music is music in most people's eyes. Historical music trends are named after popular artists of the time. Still you have lammuer (slow waltzes), whirls (reels) and tonsets (courtly formal dances).

There is no standard agreed upon scale that is used by the whole of the Realms.

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Instruments

The instruments most frequently seen in the hands of common minstrels are lutes and harps. Bells, clapping or stamping one's feet, rhythm sticks and a small wooden pipe akin to a penny whistle serve as accompaniment, and for major percussion instruments you have hand drums and 'great drums' (kettle drums).

Ocarinas, kazoos and mouth harps are pretty common.

Yarting: An acoustic guitar, basically, with origins in Amn and Calimshan, but variations exist everywhere.

Songhorn: Recorders

Straele: A violin-like instrument, shaped a bit like a metronome and played cradled in one arm (preferably while sitting).

Great staele: Cellos and basses

Drone: A large, stationary double-reed instrument with a bladder and several mouthpieces, played by multiple musicians and sounding either like the drones of a bagpipe or an organ or synthesizer.

Jassaran: a crude 'keyboard-and-wires' instrument invented in Sembia that sounds something like a harpsichord.

Artang: A dulcimer, though artangs are only plucked or bowed.)

Shawm: A gnomish instrument that's something like an oboe or bassoon in form. There's also a bellows powered variant.

Zulkoon: A Thayan pump organ. Pipe organs also exist.

Tantan: tambourines. Popular with halflings.

Longhorns: flutes

'Birdpipes' or Shalm: pan pipes. Most popular with Lliirans and elves, particularly copper and green elves.

Tocken: carved oval bells set to hang so that they can be lightly struck. Instruments such as this are found in subterranean cultures (Dwarves and goblins, mostly). The sound echoes through the structures.

Glaur: Basically a trumpet (more specifically it sounds like a renaissance instrument called a serpent), shaped something between a cornucopia and a saxophone.

Gloon: Much like a glaur, but lacking in valves and it produces a markedly mournful sound.

'Whistlecanes' or thelarr: The bane of parents. Basically just a cut reed you can whistle with. People like to give them to children, who do as children do and proceed to give everybody ear aches from badly played instruments.

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Music

With a note that a lot of the following kind of applies to the Sword Caoast, Heartlands, Cormyr, Dalelands and etc. Different regions of Faerûn have different music. The kind of Thayan music you'd hear in alehouses in East Faerûn, for example, apparently sounds like this. (Songs with such tunes are called 'thaeraeden,' or 'life laments', and the lyrics are often melancholy questions and challenges. Usually break up songs and unrequited love, the usual.)

So, switching out more modern instruments like drumkits and electric guitars, this is the kind of music you'd apparently expect to hear from minstrels, street and tavern performers and etc. This is basically turning on the radio:

Popular ballads and songs sound something like:

These: X, X, X, X,

Stuff like Leonard Cohen. X

1970s folk music, like Steeleye Span and Maddie Prior. Like the Prickle Eye Bush X, X.

Tongue-in-cheek songs like the Irish Ballad are popular with the working class. I feel like that one specifically would be popular with drow and Bhaalspawn, personally.

'Easy listening' being played in the background while you're passing the evening at a tavern sounds like standard Renaissance fare like Packington's Pound and My Thing is My Own.

Dance music would sound something like this: X

The kind of music you're likely to hear at an upper class party is going to be bringing in musicians and possibly orchestras and dancing. Stuff like this: X, X, X, X,

Orchestral music doesn't utilise strings very much, and prefers to use vocalisation in its place. You generally get more stuff like this.

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The Opera

Inasfar as I can tell, the opera is exactly what you expect.

The most famous/popular operas include:

'the War of Three Castles:' Featuring a bunch of kings throwing their sons and daughters off to lead armies against each other. Disaster strikes, two princes and a princess are trapped in a tomb in the Underdark and a love triangle ensues. The princess decides fuck that nonsense, she will have both or neither but she's not having this drama, and they work out a polyamorous relationship, and agree that they will go home and have a 'marriage of three crowns' where they all marry each other, even if their fathers may try to stop them or execute them for it. Then they get back up there, discover that their fathers have been killed turning the entire region into a war torn region. They recover what is left, and they get married and unite their kingdoms in peace and like happily ever after.

'Alvaericknar:' The lovable rogue archetype who shares his name with the title bites off more than he can chew trying to rob a lich - who kills him. But he's prepared for that, and due to ensuring that the lich killed him in a spot that would set of several enchantments he manages to come back as undead, and proceeds to continue his hijinks. 'As an undead, he goes right on being a swindling, fun-loving rascal, only now he doesn’t need food or drink or shelter.'

'Downdragon Harr': An evil sorceress turns a princess into a dragon, uses magic to disguise herself as the princess, murders the king and takes over the kingdom. Her first decree is to have every dragon in the kingdom slain (all dragons are played by bassi profundi). A knight with a magic sword wounds the princess in her dragon form, and the enchantment on the blade breaks the spell on her. They fall in love via duet, and then go to the most ancient wyrm in the land (the titular Harr), wake him from his centuries long slumber and use him as their steed to fly off and challenge the sorceress. 'She sees their approach and uses mighty sorcery, that drains the life from most of her courtiers and all of her guards, to slay the dragon as it dives down on the castle—but in death, it slays her, crashing into the castle and crushing her to pulp under its great bulk as it slides to a (dead) stop. (It sings in death, and so does the queen from somewhere under it.) The princess and the knight begin their happy rule, and wedded bliss, atop the carcass of the great dragon.'

One suspects dragons do not care overmuch for this opera.

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Hymns:

Religious music is typically plainchant, a form of music that usually consists purely of vocals (typically a solitary singer). There is no set rhythm, as the song consists of singing prayers and religious verse. Sometimes there's the occasional accompaniment from a instrument, such as an organ, or a slow heavy drum beat, in the case of Banite hymns.

They can be more complex: polyphonic hymns involve 'two or more singers or instrumentalists playing independent melodic lines at the same time.'

The hymns of most faiths sound most akin to Gregorian chanting. At its softest and most elaborate, you get something that sounds something like a simplified Enya song.

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Elves

Ah yes, the mysterious and magic melodies of the Tel'Quessir...

Which apparently sound a lot like, say, Don't Bring Me Down, Land of Confusion, Domino Medley, Mr Blue Sky...

They also have your Enya and Loreena McKennit type stuff.

Replace the guitar with a harp, maybe throw in a flute, that's elven music. It's rock. Elven instruments are the only instruments thus far capable of sustain. The effects on the vocals can be replicated by elves, who have a strange quirk with their vocal chords where they can produce two notes/sounds at once, distorting their voice in a way that's similar. Some have a genetic quirk that allows them to sort of say 'two things at once.' Generally elves prefer softer singing voices.

Elven musical performances feature galadrae - three dimensional illusions depicting scenes to go along with the song, not dissimilar to what one might see at a modern concert. Generally the theme is the history/story behind the piece.

Common elven folk songs are apparently these: Laeryn's Lament My Love Green And Growing Blood of My Sisters The Moondapple Stag Knights On The Ride Thorn Of Rose Winterwillow [an instrumental] Greenhallow Mantle Stone Fall, Tree Rise The Lady Laughing

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Dwarves

Dwarves like drums and metallic percussion for their music, and vocals tend to be plainsong.

Large clanholds with volcanic vents may build giant complex pipe organs.

'...usually dwarves play piano-like personal instruments (strings hit with hammers; hitting things with hammers is the dwarven way). Most such dwarf instruments look more like an accordion (small portable keyboard) and have metal strings.'

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Gnomes

Gnomes like drones and oboes (or shawms, I guess). Traditionally, history and lore has been an oral tradition kept by women, so it wouldn't surprise me if some lorekeepers sing it.

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Halflings

Halflings are apparently known for their comic, and usually bawdy, operas, which are popular with gnomes and dwarves. Titles include 'Ravalar’s Roister In The Cloister; Yeomen, Bowmen, and The Taming Maiden; The Seven Drunken Swordswingers Of Silverymoon; The Haunted Bedpan; The Laughing Statue Of Beltragar; and The Night Six In-Use Beds Fell Into The Castle Moat.'

Outside of that their music overlaps a lot with human music trends.

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Orcs and goblins

Heavy drumbeats, gongs, warhorns and rhythmic shouting/chanting.

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Dragonborn

Nothing outside of BG3 that I see, so I'd go with what the game says: throat singing.