Setting up the game

• A poem with several verses. It could be a sonnet, a madrigal or an ottava rima of a marginalized poet from Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods.
• Tarot deck with 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana, divided in four seeds.
• A corpus of musical schemata drawn from the composer(s) favourite collection of polyphonic songs, each of them labelled according to each Major Arcana card.
• Two small wooden disks (wheels):
• Triangle of three hexachords (durum, naturalis and mollis)
• Hexagon of Renaissance authentic modes (dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian,aeolian)
• A blank music sheet paper and a pencil or your favourite music editing software.
• A couple of hours in a space where you can freely try out your fragments by playing on an instrument or singing with patient and dedicated friends.

On the left the hexachord wheel and on the right the modes wheel.

Minor Arcana Rules

For the hexachord wheel:

• Seed of Cups and Clubs ⇾ the hexachord token is stable.
• Seed of Hearts ⇾ move the hexachord token clockwise.
• Seed of Spades ⇾ move the hexachord token counter-clockwise.

For the mode wheel:

• Court, or Face cards (from 11 to 14) -> the mode token is stable.
• Pip cards (from 1 to 10):
• Values from 1 to 5 -> move mode token n times clockwise. For example, a pip card of value 4 will move the token four steps clockwise.
• Values from 6 to 10 -> move the mode token 11-n counterclockwise. For example, a pip card of value 7 will move the token four (11 minus 7) counter-clockwise.

Corpus of Musical Schemata

In order to play the game, the composer(s) will need a corpus of 22 musical schemata curated beforehand. We are providing an example of such a corpus assembled from musical excerpts from the musical project Sprezzanti Rime as ZIP file containing PDF, MIDI and Lilypond transcriptions for each schema.

The players are encouraged to create their own corpus of schemata, reflecting their musical taste and motivations behind this compositional game.