Mi Contra Fa

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.

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. 

Roland: Wait, I take it back

I'm losing track which book of Norse folksongs is which, but!  Here is an 1853 book which the Internet Archive credits to Landstad but Google appears to be a credit as an omnibus edition of Landstad, Lindemann and Croger. 

Here in that book is the start of "Roland og Magnus koingin."  Here (with lazy Anglified letters) is the first verse:

Sex mine sveinar heime vera
goyme ded gullid balde
dei adres sex pa heid heidningslando
royne dei jonni kalde!

Here are the Glittertind lyrics from yonder translation:

Seks mine jarlar heime vera, gøyme det gullet balde,
Andre seks på heidningalando då svinga dei jørni kalde!
- Rida dei ut av Franklandet med dyre dros i sadel,
Bles i luren Olivant på Ronsalavollen.

If you remove the refrain (the last two lines):

Seks mine jarlar heime vera,
gøyme det gullet balde,
Andre seks på heidningalando
då svinga dei jørni kalde!

They aren't exactly the same, but yeah, I'll buy that they actually are the same song. Maybe different dialects?  Or one of these is a Danish edition or something?  "Six" is obviously "sex" in one, and "seks" in the other.

Now, I would have sworn yesterday that I saw a "Roland and Magnus" that was much, much different, so let me go scare up the Lindemann book I found. ...right, you can download the whole thing here.  He gives a whole bunch of lyrics up front, then gives all the tunes.  The index tells me "Raamund" is songs 43 and 90.  At Song 43, it says "(Sammelign hermed No. 90, Landstad Pag. 189.)"  Imma guess "See below Number 90, Landstad page 189." 

So, on to No. 90.  "(Se No. 43.)"  Well.  That leaves us with Landstand 189, which, if I go up to "Norske folkeviser" (the first link in this post) and go to page 189... yup.  A song about Ramund.  Who is apparently not Roland.  So Lindemann just doesn't cover Roland at all.

So where's the tune I thought was a variant?  (This is why I say to keep a daily log.  I had this up in front of me yesterday, and I'm already confused about what I saw where.)  Ah, there's the link in yesterday's post and... no, that's pretty much the tune.  What was I thinking?

So we've nailed the verses down as a variant of something collected by Landstad in 1853; the refrain/burden with Oliver blowing the horn isn't there at that time. 

The tune is credited to Klara Semb (as a Faroese dance tune that she collected); there's a copy of her book at the Library of Congress, which might be accessible to me if I want to double-check that.  I wonder if the extra words were written at that time?  Clearly there was more tune than words, so perhaps the refrain was added?  That's circa 1921.

And my remaining question is, How old is the ballad form in Norway?  This site says (in translation) that "it is assumed that there must have been made ballads as early as the late 1200s while Erik Magnusson was king."  That's quite an assumption, and one that bears checking out.

(Ugh, ick.  I keep getting search results from Stormfront.org...)

See, this is what Wikipedia is good for - telling me where to look.  First, there's native Norweigan skaldic verse.  Then, the kings start importing Icelandic skalds.  Still all alliterative verse going on here.  What about the High and Later Middle Ages?  They're a part of Four Hundred Years of Darkness, apparently.  So I should go and see what the Danes were up to, poetically.

(northvegr.org, bookmarked for future reference...)

There is... not a lot out there on medieval Danish poetry.

100 Danish Poems: From the Medieval to the Present Day may be my best bet.  I'm hoping it has notes talking about the history of the poetry.  At least it's facing-page translations.  At UMD McKeldin Library, due back May 8.

Poems, from the Danish.  A folk-song/poem collection, 1815.  Not what I need.

Romantic Ballads, translated from the Danish.  1913.  Partly translations of a contemporary Danish poet, partly translations of the Kiape/Kaempe Viser, which (if I can believe the Internet) is a Danish collection of songs first appearing in 1591.  (Scholarly essay mentioning this here; apparently one Robert Jamieson included several of the Kaempe Viser ballads in a collection of popular ballads in 1806.)  Anyhow, the Borrow "Romantic Ballads" has this to say on Danish versification:

The old Danish poets were, for the most part, extremely rude in their versification. Their stanzas of four or two lines have not the full rhyme of vowel and consonant, but merely what the Spaniards call the "assonante," or vowel rhyme, and attention seldom seems to have been paid to the number of _feet_ on which the lines moved along. But, however defective their poetry may be in point of harmony of numbers, it describes, in vivid and barbaric language, scenes of barbaric grandeur, which in these days are never witnessed; and, which, though the modern muse may imagine, she generally fails in attempting to pourtray, from the violent desire to be smooth and tuneful, forgetting that smoothness and tunefulness are nearly synonymous with tameness and unmeaningness.

Yay just-barely-post-Victorians.

(On the other hand, his "Sir John"?  That may be worth getting a tune for and performing!)

(Jamieson's Popular Ballads and Songs, to see what he does/says about the Danish poems.)

Translated Danish wiki page for Kaempevise.  "Giant Display."  Excellent.  Gives the 16th cen as a start date, with correlates with the 1591 publication date, as well as the rise of balladry in England.

"Justin Bieber viser kæmpe Jesus-tatovering"  I don't know what that means, but I think it deserves to be shared.

Hm, Borrow mentions that Anders Sorensen Vedel was the editor of the 1591 Kaempe.  His wiki page doesn't give that name for the collection of 100 ballads, but rather Hundredvisebog.  And hey, look: here it is on Google Books.  But gaaah, no ebook.  WorldCat says it's up at Harvard; I could ILL it if I want, I suppose.  Getting a bit far afield...  (Hey, WorldCat knows I'm at work.  Does that mean I can't access it from home? Maybe it's subscription-only?)

That's enough for today.  My informed best guess is that Scandanavian balladry is going to be documentable to 1591 Hundredvisebog.  Maybe there are some scraps or fragments or transitional styles earlier, but I would probably need to be speaking Danish and in Denmark's libraries to track the evidence down.

http://lyricstranslate.com

Christ and Theseus

Documentation can be found here.

Theseus bold   Athenian prince
Away to Crete    walks the sea-road
Seven youths    and seven maids
Sacrifices    to sins of the queen

Mighty warrior    Minotaur mains
Kills the monster    Cretan horror
Steals the princess    stealthy departs
With children of Athens    creeping for home
Hero he's called    for hard-won battle

How much more honor    heaven bestows
To Lord on High    who harrowed hell
Descended the depths    devil to fight
Satan he's conquered    sin's first father
Ancient enemy    evil's own author
Tough-hided minotaur    mere thrall in his hall
But Christ defeats him    drives him down deep
Binds him in chains    chastises him well

No mere fourteen    led forth from that place
Just forefathers     gentle virgins
Righteous prophets    pagans of virtue
Died in darkness    devil did claim them
But no longer he holds them    the Lord sets them free
Leads them all laughing    to light-lands above
Til one remains        - Mother Eve

Ariadne was left    languished on Naxos
Eve asks for mercy    in Mary's name
Bright daughter descended    from sinful woman
Of her Christ was born    brought into the world
One sacrifice for all    even for Eve
He lifts her up    helps her to heaven

Most mighty hero    all hall-fame his due
No man surpasses    his masterful deeds
Praise his name        people who hear this

The Harrowing of Hell

Chalice of the Sun God's theme this year is Theseus freeing the kids tithed to Crete.  I can't make the event but I can write something for it.  Writing as an Anglo-Saxon, I want to make the analogy to the Harrowing of Hell and the freeing of the just souls.

First crack at harrowing Google for sources:

Poems and prose from the Old English

In a footnote in an article on Beowulf.

Wikipedia on the early liturgical drama.  The Book of Cerne.

Middle English Harrowing of Hell book.

A translation of Christ and Satan (contains a Harrowing).

 

 

Wild Goose Flies

Yee-es.  It's been a while, hasn't it?  I discovered video games.  It's been great fun but absorbing.

But we've got Baronial Birthday this weekend and their Excellencies need a departing poem.  I've written one for Johanna and one for Sean and Elizabeth, so I mean to do one for Rorik and Janina.  What with the "goose thing" they have, a goose motif presents itself. 

I mean, geese.  They fly away.  It works for leave-taking.

This was a first draft, written Friday night on an airplane:

A flock of geese gladdens summer days
Harmonious honking heralds them
Bills are bright in gorse-grey faces

But autumn arrives early this year
Geese all gather; goslings have fledged
Soon they take flight, fast-beating wings
Southward they travel, seeking warm weather
Wise are the geese! who go in the fall,
Return in the spring - soon they come back
No long parting this - the patterns of life

I left a blank space after the "bills are bright" line, thinking there needed to be some kind of bridge and yeah, there really does.

Welcome in croft to craft their nests
Raise their goslings at river's edge
Dwell with us - abide a while

Aahh. That's better.

This was... overall better than I thought it was when I wrote it.  It may just do.

Slippery like sand

I've had the Winchester Troper "Kyrie" on repeat in the car for a few days now and I still can't say I've got the thing memorized.  There are so many notes, so much stepwise motion, so few syllables to help remember what comes next - I am not at all surprised that this style of music required the invention of a system of notation.  Nor does the form of the earliest notation surprise me - I find myself thinking that just a wavy line to help me remember if the next step is up or down or on a new syllable would be perfect.

I'm also making no progress in directly adapting the tune to the Nam languens poem.  The antiphonal verses are so different than the "Kyrie" itself - it works for that song, as structured, but it really doesn't work for a cohesive single poem.  And the music of just the "Kyrie" proper is just too short to stretch over eight lines.

So I really need to tuck the "Kyrie" into the back of my head as inspiration and just compose new music.

Husband's Message resources

One translation (has alliteration, archaic pronouns)
Two translation (literal, non-alliterating)
Three translation (has alliteration, archaic pronouns)
Anglo-Saxon Aloud entry

Impressions

One:
"Since I have crossed the salt-streams often" is just asking for Ghostbusters jokes.
I am not grooving on the thees and thous.
Some editing could fix both issues.
The alliteration seems mostly in good form

Two:
Always nice to have at least one literal translation around
Missing sections render it unfit for performance
Might serve as a basis for my own version

Three:
Reads like the Victorian translation it is
Dodgy alliteration
Does have some nice images, might be a good place to borrow from

To Do (Once Nam languens is done)

Check books at home for other translations
Decide whether to use a translation or do my own
-- If my own, write it
Memorize poem
Decide on musical accompaniment

Languens: Take Three

My love for you, a constant ache
I rose from bed at (s) daybreak
With small bare-footed steps I go
(u) Through the cold and through the snow
On empty sea I turned my gaze
While searching by the sun's first rays
For white sails filled with winter wind
Or your ship's bow come home again

Songwriter's Dirty Tricks

The place marked with a (u) is a missing unstressed syllable.  The hack poet's answer is to slap an unnecessary single syllable filler in there. "All," "so," and "yet" are popular for the purpose.  ("All" would be the most sensible choice here.)

The hack songwriter's answer is to ignore it.  These lines are iambic, meaning the first syllable is unstressed.  Well, the first beat of a measure* is always stressed.  So when you write music for iambic lines, the first note will actually be the last beat (or half-beat) of the previous measure.  Then the first stressed note of the measure falls on the second, stressed syllable of the line.

So when you are missing that initial unstress, you just hold the tone for the last word of the previous line a beat (or half-beat) longer than usual.  This is one of the ways "close enough for folk music" works.

I think the poem is superior without a hacked-in "all."  It's arguably even more superior to fix it so that it's eight syllables but I like the current symmetry and repetition.

Now, the (s) denotes a missing stressed syllable and that cannot be ignored.  "Daybreak" needs a single syllable adjective to describe it.  Note that the hack answer is to rewrite it as "all at daybreak."  "At just daybreak" is pretty hacky, but at least "just" connotes that our speaker is up and out of bed immediately as soon as the first light of dawn is visible.  It adds to the line, albeit clumsily.

I keep wanting to put a possessive in there (light's daybreak, dawn's daybreak, day's daybreak) but they're either don't make sense or are redundant.

Dim? Grey?  ...I think I might like grey.  It goes with the wintery scene.

My love for you, a constant ache
I rose from bed at grey daybreak
With small bare-footed steps I go
Through the cold and through the snow
On empty sea I turned my gaze
While searching by the sun's first rays
For white sails filled with winter wind
Or your ship's bow come home again

I'll let that sit and see how it reads in a bit.

*Of course, measure and meter are totally anachronistic to this time and place, but I haven't yet got the trick of composing nonmetrical music.