The Song of Dath Ilan

[James Babcock]

The Song of Dath Ilan
Written/translated by Eliezer Yudkowsky

Even if the stars should die in heaven
Our sins can never be undone
No single death will be forgiven
When fades at last the last lit sun.
Then in the cold and silent black
As light and matter end
We’ll have ourselves a last look back
And toast an absent friend.

This was originally from
http://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/post/81447230971/my-april-fools-day-confession
and recently featured in an author's note to Harry Potter and the
Methods of Rationality. I don't know the melody to this song - I don't
think there is one, yet. And that bothers me; I'd like to be able to
sing it, at least in my head.

Rational-ritual list: Will someone take a stab at composing a melody
for this? The song has been through a translation already, so wording
tweaks for musical purposes should be fine.

[tholomyes]

Rough draft

[James Babcock]

Thanks, that's exactly what I was hoping for!

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[tholomyes]

Glad you like it :)

[Rasmus Eide]

Is it just me or does that last line miss a "for" and turn to a rather
more disturbing meaning because of it?

On 3/13/15, tholomyes <thol...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Glad you like it :)
>
> On Thursday, March 12, 2015 at 8:29:25 PM UTC-5, jimrandomh wrote:
>>
>> Thanks, that's exactly what I was hoping for!

>> On Mar 12, 2015 5:43 PM, "tholomyes" <thol...@gmail.com <javascript:>>

>>> email to rational-ritu...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>.

[Alice]

define: toast

verb: to propose as a toast

[Wesley Rian]

Another option would be to find an existing tune that fits the meter, but I know a single-digit number of hymns and .

A lot of past hymns were written as texts to music taken from either other hymns or folk songs -- this is why some Christmas songs can be sung multiple different ways. For O Little Town of Bethlehem, for example, there's the music that the organist of the church of the guy who wrote the poem wrote for it, which we usually use in the US, and then the music to the folk song Forest Green (which you may have heard from the Christmas version of Lemmings, if anyone remembers that game), which they usually use in the UK. And the US national anthem was written as a poem and then put to the music of a drinking song that originated as the theme song of a London society of amateur musicians.

There are failure modes to that -- The Waning of the Middle Ages says that people sometimes sung in church the words of not the hymn, but the folk song that the hymn took its music from -- but there aren't very many people who know the folk songs or the hymns anymore, so there's plenty of music that can be mined for new songs / rationalist hymns that almost certainly won't have any pre-existing associations. In case anyone wants there to be more of those but can't write music.

[Jeremy Groom]

I would actually like to work on writing more rational music. I perform in a nerd folk band, and we already play for the free-thought community semi-regularly, so I know we would have an audience for it. Turns out, writing rational themes into music that is compelling is more difficult than writing funny songs about Michael Bay. Still working on it.