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

Antiphony

Performance
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 call-and-response pattern between voices. One speaker or group answers another in a structured exchange.

Detailed Definition
Antiphony adapts a practice associated with religious, musical, and communal traditions to poetic performance. A lead voice may offer a line, refrain, question, or declaration, while an audience or chorus replies with a repeated or contrasting phrase. The form can dramatize conflict, establish solidarity, and give a poem a participatory rhythm. It is especially effective in political, ceremonial, and performance poetry.
Example
Example in poetry:
During a reading of a protest poem, the poet calls, “Who owns the future?” and the audience answers, “We do!”; A group performs a poem with one speaker saying each line and a chorus repeating a key phrase such as “We remember”; In an antiphonal performance of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” one reader delivers the river names while the group responds, “My soul has grown deep like the rivers”; A poet divides the room into two groups, with one group voicing questions and the other group answering in lines from the poem
Additional Notes
Antiphony is a call-and-response pattern in which one voice or group answers another; it is common in religious, communal, and oral traditions. Repeated phrases can build rhythm, argument, or solidarity, while altered responses can introduce tension. Compare refrain, choral speaking, and audience address. Study hint: label call and response in a script, then rehearse clear entry cues and contrasting vocal textures.
Other Meanings of “Antiphony”
Also Known As
Antiphonal Performance Call-and-Response
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