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 T

Tensó

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 debate poem in Occitan lyric in which two poets argue opposing views on a subject of love or ethics, each defending a position in alternating stanzas. Close to the jeu-parti.

Detailed Definition
The tensó is a fundamental dialogic genre of troubadour poetry, consisting of a versified dispute between two real or fictional interlocutors defending opposing positions on a question of love, ethics, or poetics. Unlike the jeu-parti, where the initial speaker proposes the choice, in the tensó either interlocutor may introduce the dispute. Famous tensós include debates between a lady and her lover, or between competing ethical values. The tensó reflects the centrality of debate and dialectics in courtly culture, where poetic skill and rhetorical argumentation were both forms of social performance and markers of aristocratic refinement.
Example
Example in poetry:
A tensó presents a poetic debate between two speakers on love or ethics; Troubadours used the tensó for witty argumentative exchange; A student stages a classroom poetic dialogue modelled on a tensó; A modern spoken-word duel about technology could echo the tensó tradition
Additional Notes
Tableau in poetic analysis refers to a vividly composed scene presented almost like a visual painting, often emphasising arrangement, atmosphere, and descriptive stillness. French literature frequently draws on visual-art metaphors, making the concept especially useful. Students should distinguish tableau from narrative movement, since the effect often lies in suspended observation rather than action. Compare with image and ekphrastic techniques. A tableau invites attention to composition, framing, and sensory orchestration.
Also Known As
Tenson Tenzone
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