A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter A

Alba

French
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A dawn song expressing the sorrow of lovers who must separate at daybreak, warning of the coming day. One of the oldest lyric genres of Occitan and Old French poetry.

Detailed Definition
The alba, meaning dawn in Occitan, is among the most emotionally resonant genres of medieval lyric. Its dramatic situation is invariable: two lovers, usually in an adulterous courtly relationship, must part at dawn after a secret night together, warned by a watchman or a friend. The tension between the beauty of love and the cruelty of time gives the alba its characteristic pathos. It influenced European lyric from the troubadours through Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet balcony scene. Its recurring motifs of light, separation, and lament make it a touchstone of the lyric tradition.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Occitan poetry, the alba begins with a watchman's cry warning lovers of dawn's approach, as in the anonymous "En un vergier sotz fuella d'albespi" where a lady laments her knight must leave; The alba's defining moment is the cruel intrusion of daylight into the lovers' secret world, as in Giraut de Bornelh's "Reis glorios, veraie lums e clardatz" where the watchman calls to his sleeping friend; Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet balcony scene ("It was the nightingale, and not the lark") echoes the alba tradition in dramatic form, showing its cross-cultural influence; The alba contrasts sharply with the evening song or serena, since where the serena welcomes night for lovers, the alba dreads the dawn that separates them; A modern poet writing an alba might depict city lovers parting at a subway entrance as morning commuters arrive, updating the medieval genre's essential tension between love and the world's demands; The alba teaches students how a single dramatic situation, lovers at dawn, can generate an entire lyric genre with consistent motifs of light, birds, watchmen, and lament across centuries.
Additional Notes
Alba is closely related to the Occitan aubade and belongs to the courtly lyric tradition of medieval Romance poetry. The essential dramatic situation is the separation of lovers at dawn, often with a watchman warning of approaching danger or social exposure. Students should compare the alba with the serenade and aubade traditions in later European poetry, where dawn becomes either a moment of loss or awakening. In French literary history, the alba helps illustrate how lyric poetry emerged from sung performance and social ritual rather than purely written literary culture.
Also Known As
Aube Aubade Alba Longa Alborada
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