Mi Contra Fa

Flute Research

I got my copy of Bone, Antler, Ivory and Horn in the  mail yesterday!  Flipping to the section on bone flutes, I found...

Fipple flutes?

Fipple flutes.

Sigh.

I have an ILL out on some of Graeme Lawson's reports on Anglo-Saxon bone flute finds. No offense to Arthur MacGregor, but if there's only two such bone flutes cited in his book, I may as well check them out in the original archaeological reports and see what the musicologist has to say about them.  Then I go back to the bone book to figure out how to make the thing.

Quena!

For Mother's Day, I took myself to the House of Musical Traditions and scored a bamboo quena.  It's a notched, end-blown flute (NEBF hereafter, because I am lazy).  Since I have no experience in making instruments of any kind, I thought I should get a real NEBF to see if/how I could play it, and how it was made.

I can get sound out of it, but not really reliably.  Progress! But need practice.  With this as a template, I can measure off proportions for trying to make a NEBF out of some PVC pipe I picked up at the hardware store.

I think I also need to lay hands on an actual archaeological report (or two or six) documenting some of the actual Anglo-Saxon flute finds.  I think I've sort of assumed that because I saw one bone flute in the news that was a NEBF, obviously all early bone flutes were the same.  That might not actually be the case.

Graeme Lawson's website lists his publications, which include analysis of several Anglo-Saxon flutes.  None of them are easily available (read: free and on the Internet) but I can check my local university card catalogue and see what turns up.

Mailbag: From Sweden!

I am always thrilled when people email me about the blog.  I am doubly thrilled, this time, as J.S. from Sweden wrote with some information relevant to the Roland project, and an offer to assist with understanding the Scandanavian sources.

He confirmed that the "medieval ballads" are just about what the Child ballads are for English-speakers: collected in the 19th and 20th centuries, but with subject matter that could be much older: "They are called 'medieval' because they usually have aristocratic protagonists in what looks like a medieval setting, plus that it is assumed that Scandinavians started to sing them when the ballad genre reached Scandinavia from the continent some time around the 12th century."  There are articles on the possible evolution of that ballad genre, and I will probably try to get my claws into them.

There were some ballads written down in the 16th century (I linked to some of the 19th century English translations of them a bit back), but again as in the English case, the tunes were all collected by folklorists in the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

So we're definitely in the "SCA-appropriate, period subject matter, not actually period" realm.  Still a worthwhile project, I think, though.

J.S. also cleared up some matters of translation:  "'Kaempevise' is, by the way, correctly translated as 'heroic ballad'. [Google translated it as 'Giant Display.']  (The usual ambiguity of translations: 'kaempe' can be both giant or hero, and 'vise' can be everything from ballad to nursery rhyme and lots of other words too...). 'Justin Bieber viser kæmpe Jesus-tatovering' means "Justin Bieber shows a big Jesus tattoo."

And now you know! 

"You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve?

You just put your lips together and blow."

Thank you, Lauren Bacall. 

So, when you're trying to play a 3/8" diameter tube as a flute, it helps to purse your lips into something like a 3/8" diameter hole, rather than have them sort of flat and wide.  It helps a lot!

EDIT: Or, you know, I could be actually whistling.  *facepalm*

Well, at least I had fun.

So, yeah, the blog's named what it is for a reason.

I spent a good 90 minutes at the University of Maryland's Performing Arts Library last night, with two different copies of Klara Semb's "Norse Folkdance."  One was the 1951 translation, which ended up being more of a 40-page pamphlet containing only some background material on the kinds of dances, and then about four tunes and dances.  The other was the 1925 edition of her book, in Norwegian.

I combed through it, looking at all the music for a tune that matched "Rolandskvaet."  Nope, nada, zilch.  There were two tunes labeled "faeryosk" (Faroese) and I dutifully copied them down to compare at home, but no love. 

Yes, well.  I was looking at the 1925 edition of volume one of her book.  There are four volumes, apparently, all with the same primary title and then subtitles to distinguish them.  This was not clear to me until after I got home.  The tune for Roland is supposed to be in the second volume.

The second volume is in the Library of Congress.  I've gone to the LoC before for concerts; it would be an entire evening to get into the city, register as a reader, view the book and get out, but I could do it.  Alternately, it's an afternoon to get my UMD Alumni card its library bar code, then submit an ILL request to have the book sent there.  Either option is really pushing at the limits of my curiosity vs time spent curve, re: the tune source, but my inability to overlook such things may mean I'll track it down eventually.  In the meantime, I'll go with the Trio Medieval tune that I like and compare it to my current lyrics.

Also, I picked up a bunch of PVC pipe, drill bits and files.  The nice man at the Home Depot even cut the ten-foot lengths into one-foot pieces for me!  We'll see where that goes with the bone flute project.  (Speaking of... I got a few more toots out of my pen version, and got a change in tone from the fingerhole I'd made.  But I can't reliably pick it up and make sound on it.  Finding the right combination of pen/mouth angle and embouchere is hard.)

Pen flute 1

So I found a plastic pen that really easilly disassembled into a plastic tube and some parts.  And I had a pocket knife with which to cut a small notch and sort of sharpen it/ramp the edge of it.  And I poked a 'finger hold' toward the other end.

After several attempts at blowing which got me breathy, raspy Coke-bottle sounds, I got a real, clear, loud note!  So loud, in fact, that future experiments in embouchere will have to take place outside...

New book: The Rhythm of Beowulf

And by "new" I mean "new to me."  J.C. Pope first published his book in 1942; I have the revised 1966 second edition.  It was on my list of "things to check out from the library" from years ago; it wasn't until I read Christopher Page discussing it in his dissertation that I knew it MUST BE MINE.

Essentially, he takes the Sievers types and junks them, replacing them with a structure that is entirely more suitable for musical performance.

...the Sievers types.  A fellow name of Sievers went through the Old English poetic corpus and tried to understand its structure.  He deduced that each line is made of two half lines, and that each half line corresponds to one of five major rhythmic patterns, e.g., "strong weak, strong weak", "strong, weak weak, strong," "weak strong, weak strong" and "weak, strong strong, weak."  (And the there's his D types, which use three different levels of stress and I still don't fully grok them.)

I'm only a few pages in, but Pope's basic idea seems to be that each half-line is "isochronous," which is a fancy way of saying "is spoken in the same amount of time as every other half-line," which in turn ends up corresponding directly to "can be represented as two bars of 2/4 music."  To make this work out, he has to insert rests into the bar, often at the beginning of a half-line.  Which would be a great place to strum a lyre, as he points out.

Hey, no wonder I like this idea so much.  I was onto a similar track back in 2008, before I even had this blog.  Ha HA I feel all smart now.

Anyway, it seems to be an important book with huge implications for the performance of OE poetry.  Composition, not so sure yet.

Bone Flutes

I've had it in my head for a while to make a bone flute.  Or maybe buy one?  Although that seems like cheating.

Turns out, there's more than side-blown and fipple flutes.  Really old bone flutes were end blown but had no fipple.  There's just sort of a notch cut in one end, and you use your lip as the fipple.

Now emptor has to caveat here, because a lot of places sell bone flutes that are bone, or imitation bone, but are fipple flutes.  This guy appears to have some of both... for $50-$100.  Which is kind of a lot.  Here's a "stone age flute" but in bamboo, for $39.  Gorgeous sound, but almost too gorgeous - most of these things were wing bones and tiny, so very shrill. 

On a lark, I tried an experiment with a soda straw; actually a milk shake straw, so it's a little wider.  I cut a notch in one end and tried to blow.  Upside down, at first, until I remembered the notch and the holes (which I did not cut) both went up.  Aheh.  I got, briefly, a tone.  After much more trying, I got the suggestion of a tone.  Is it because it's too thin in the walls?  Or my embouchere is just awful?  It's a cheap plastic straw? Probably all of the above.

Searching for "straw flute" turns up lots of ways to turn a straw into a reed, but not really a flute.  So I thought... what about a pen?  A pen is thick-walled enough.  Indeed it is, as this nifty YouTube video shows, but the many videos in the sidebar reminded me that maybe PVC would be a good thing to practice on.

For future reference, a how-to guide for making a turkey call from a turkey wing has basic instructions on cleaning and preparing the bone.  From what I already know of boneworking (which is not much), using baked bones and then boiling them is not exactly recommended, but if I encounter a roasted turkey anytime in the near future, this will still be handy to have.

Anyhow.  I may see how small PVC pipe comes, buy a bit and try making flutes with it.  When I feel like I have the knack of it, then we worry about finding an appropriate bone (or reed? There's cattails and pampas grass near me...) and cleaning it.

Roland: Rough Draft

Found another translation to work from/with.  Helpful, since the other had a few holes. ("Okay, that word seems to be that word... but where' that entire half-line?")

The original appears to have (sigh) feminine rhyme.  I didn't even try.  The ending notes are the same, so it's very, very easy to just make them one, longer syllable.

It's only the nine verses performed by Glittertind, that their fans have translated, not the entire 31-verse poem. (Any Norwegian speakers out there?)

Rather than work on it with the score in front of me, the smart way, I ran with the tune as I have it in my head.  Is it how the tune actually goes?  Did I lose half the eighth notes along the way?  I will have to review this and see.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Six of my earls will stay at home to guard the rings of gold
The other six in heathen lands are swinging their iron cold 

CHORUS
Ride they out from Frankish lands on horses finely saddled
Blow the horn, Oliver, at Ronsavollen                              (or Roncevaux, dealer's choice)

Raised they up their silken sails high upon the masts
Sailed they to the heathen lands before two weeks had passed

Oaken oars and anchors strongs touched the clean white sand
Then was Roland, king's own friend, first upon the land

Slaughtered they at Roncevaux for two days and for three
On Roland's sword the Moors did die; a scythe they could not flee

The sun in the sky was blotted out as Moors they spears did throw
A frightened fellow Frankish man asked Roland his horn to blow

He set the horn to his bloody mouth, the blast heard o'er the fray
Over mountains went the sounds; it was heard three days away

Charlemagne the mighty king cries with grief and woe:
"What has passed with my own dear friend that he sounded such a blow?"

Charlemagne the mighty king came to the heathen land
Dead lay Roland, king's own friend, his sword still in his hand

Buried at home were the mighty earls and many a tear was shed
Their ship was full of gems and gold and the heathens were left for dead

Roland: Wait, which tune?

Translated page here has two tunes (culled from elsewhere on the Internet, I'm pretty sure I've seen them in other places by now).  Obviously related tunes with a few melodic variations, and a pretty big metrical difference!  (4/4 time vs. 3/8 time.)

What I really want is Semb's book.  In the meanwhile, "Traditional Music in the Faroe Islands" gives a lot of examples in 3/8, 6/8, and even 9/8 time, which inclines me that way.  (Since the tune is Faroese.  According to that book there, Danish ballads are popular in the islands.  Maybe the tune Semb uses was a tune for a Faroese version of the Roland ballad? That would be nice.

I'm not so great at relating ear-things to note-things, but I think Trio Medieval's rendition is the first one.  Definitely the musical figure with "Ronsarvol" matches that one... yeah, the opening line has the two eighth notes.  So does Glittertind's.  So that's the tune I like.

Hrm. 

Welllll... seeing as how neither tune is period, and they're clearly related, I don't think it's a great sin to use the tune I like better.  I suspect the 3/8 version might be older, but I've got no reason to think it preserves any sort of authentic characteristic of medieval song, either.  Although maybe I should read the book on Faroese traditional music.

Wait, wait, wait... one's in Phrygian mode and one's in Dorian?  Huh, that's... odd.  And interesting.