rh?ma: "that which is said or spoken."

Rhetoric is the art of using language to persuade. It normally follows three methods of logos, pathos, and ethos, as well as the five canons of memory, invention, delivery, style, and arrangement. Along with grammar and logic or dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. From ancient Greece to the late 19th Century, it was a central part of Western education, filling the need to train public speakers and writers to move audiences to action with arguments. The very act of defining has itself been a central part of rhetoric, appearing among Aristotle's Topics. The word is derived from the Greek rhe?torik?s, "oratorical", from rh?to?r, "public speaker", related to rh?ma, "that which is said or spoken, word, saying", and ultimately derived from the verb er?, "to speak, say".

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Commissioned by BBC Radio 3. First performed by the dedicatee, Mahan Esfahani, Leeds, October 29th. 2010.