þær wæs hearpes sweg ---
swutol sang scopes.
Benjamin Bagby came to town yesterday, thanks to the UT English department, with his fine rendition of the first third of Beowulf.
Anybody who thinks this is a dull and stuffy poem needs to hear his performance.
Bagby is a performer and scholar of medieval music, and a member of the group Sequentia, He and Tom Cable of the UT English Department have been working on an "educated guess" of how something like Beowulf might have been performed in Anglo-Saxon times. The first attempt was performed at a conference on medieval music at UT in 1987. I was at that performance, tired and hung over (it was at nine in the morning), and had a major epiphany during it. This is the third time since then I have caught his performance, and each time something new is revealed, as his performances are never exactly the same. Since only the text is preserved, the music can vary, and it does, from a straight recitative to full song. Each character comes alive as he changes performance style to match. The drunken Unferth is particularly notable, and even the narrative voice of the poet changes to match the particular episode
Bagby's only accompaniment is his playing of a six-string lyre which was reconstructed based on the remains of an instrument found in a grave near Stuttgart dating from the 7th century. This is definitely a case of "less is more," as this instrument becomes everything except what we are used to hearing, namely a purveyor of a set melody for both singer and accompaniment.
While Bagby only performed the first 852 lines of the poem Monday night, a DVD is in the works which will contain his performance of the whole poem.
ETA: The DVD is now out and it kicks ass. (Added 20 XII 2008)
Benjamin Bagby came to town yesterday, thanks to the UT English department, with his fine rendition of the first third of Beowulf.
Anybody who thinks this is a dull and stuffy poem needs to hear his performance.
Bagby is a performer and scholar of medieval music, and a member of the group Sequentia, He and Tom Cable of the UT English Department have been working on an "educated guess" of how something like Beowulf might have been performed in Anglo-Saxon times. The first attempt was performed at a conference on medieval music at UT in 1987. I was at that performance, tired and hung over (it was at nine in the morning), and had a major epiphany during it. This is the third time since then I have caught his performance, and each time something new is revealed, as his performances are never exactly the same. Since only the text is preserved, the music can vary, and it does, from a straight recitative to full song. Each character comes alive as he changes performance style to match. The drunken Unferth is particularly notable, and even the narrative voice of the poet changes to match the particular episode
Bagby's only accompaniment is his playing of a six-string lyre which was reconstructed based on the remains of an instrument found in a grave near Stuttgart dating from the 7th century. This is definitely a case of "less is more," as this instrument becomes everything except what we are used to hearing, namely a purveyor of a set melody for both singer and accompaniment.
While Bagby only performed the first 852 lines of the poem Monday night, a DVD is in the works which will contain his performance of the whole poem.
ETA: The DVD is now out and it kicks ass. (Added 20 XII 2008)