chantlike

At the beginning of the second act, we notice something strange in the discussion among the island captives, including a chantlike quality in Antonio's repetitions of the name of "widow Dido." They seem to be under a spell, as they debate matters ranging from the odor of the air to the beauty of the recently married daughter of Alonso in comparison with Queen Dido.

In Obscenities Casey's narrator only once declaims the "obscenity" of war, in the last four chantlike lines of "A Bummer": "If you have a farm in Vietnam/ And a house in hell/Sell the farm/And go home." The Millrat narrator is even more reticent; he never comments outright on the spirit-deadening effects of mill work; but in a poem called "resignation," which ends the book, he "listens" as one of his co-workers tries to imagine a way out:

Though not for the average collegiate or community chorus, it would provide stimulating work and a stunning performance in a rich acoustical environment with the two groups singing and humming to each other and, at times, working as one, (as in the chantlike sections).

Larsen uses a sparse chantlike quality in her vocal writing; the plainspoken mythic Western language of "yep" and "nope" resonates through Larsen's setting of Calamity Jane's words.

There is Oodgeroo Noonuccal, an important activist and the first indigenous Australian woman poet ever to be published, whose often chantlike poetry uses tradition to establish a modern affirmation of her people within Australian society.

The introduction, twenty-eight bars long, has a chantlike quality, sung over sustained chords.

The closure of the dialogue is based on poetic, nondiscursive, nonreferential qualities (the flow of sibilance and half rhymes and internal rhymes, the use of silence, the halting and merging of unfinished sentences), on the sensuous and suggestive qualities of the discourse (the mention of food and eating, intimations of hot and cold, references to the flow of water, juxtaposing of water and burning), and on the ritualistic, chantlike features of interspersed polyphonic voices.

From the invigorating chantlike poems of Oodgeroo Noonuccal to David Unaipon's detailed study of Aboriginal culture and his collection of stories from dreamtime, this anthology presents a panorama of indigenous Australia's most powerful voices.

Slowing to "Medium Again," the sixteenth note pattern of the passage of time returns, this time all in the bass clef as the surviving men "crawling slowly back, have by degrees/ Regained cool peaceful air in wonder./ Why speak not they of comrades that went under?" The vocal line continues chantlike to the end, and the piano slows gradually to a soft D minor chord.