Mi Contra Fa

Writing Popular Songs

An observation from Performer's Revel:

Scadians love narrative.

We do get the occasional lyric or other form.  But we adore story-songs.  There are, for instance, far more songs written that tell the story of two people in love than there are professions or complaints of love.  Songs that tell the story of one man who goes to war are more numerous than songs about the idea of war.  There are far more songs about magic than there are incantations.

So, if you want to write a popular song, I would advise you to write a narrative song.  We've got period models for that, so you can have your popularity and authenticity, too.  In fact, I am beginning to suspect that the easiest way to slip period performance vegetables into people's bardics is to do narratives.  Just not 10000+ line ones.  That's pushing it.

Performer's Revel Report

Fun as always!  Heard many nifty new things, including a song about the Children's Crusade that should come with a content warning for young mothers and/or pregnant women.  We had some attendees who had come from afar, including Sir Axel from the south of Atlantia and Rathlaed duNoir.  (Well, when your hosts are Clam Chowder, I guess there's a certain pull...)

We had I'd say a good half-dozen entrants for the Poeta Spring Challenge, which we followed with the maypole.  Six dancers and nearly as many singers!  It was fun, and much more coherent than the Guppy Gala demo.  Still lacked something of the frission it seems like it ought to have, probably because we were all over 30, mostly married, and a little self-conscious about the whole thing.  I also neglected to psych people up to flirt. I'd still like to see it done with a high school/college crowd.

I did get to speak with Baroness Janina about Ye Olden Daies, and I have my nugget: Storvik's first seneschal and baroness divided those duties between them by coin toss.

Personally, I did all right.  "To Put the Devil Into Hell" was quite well-received, and "None Suffer" started a brief discussion on the nature of the pilgrims (Baron Igor picked up that if they were eating white bread and wine, they weren't especially ascetic...).  I trotted out "By Your Side" for I think the second time in public; a little wobbly at first, but it went fine.  I tried Bertran de Born again; people left the room.  Oh, well - I think I do well by it, but it's just a weird-sounding song.  More gratifyingly, I read the "Saga of Fishflinger" on a lark, during a lull when folks were snacking and talking, and heard a few "Sssh!"s because folks realized they wanted to hear it.  And after the room went on something of a gypsy jag, I hauled out Beggars to God.  Little wobble in the first verse, then my voice caught up with itself and it went very well.

After listening to a large number of minor key narrative folk songs on various popular tropes, though, I admit I'm tempted to try a few Scadian versions of Title of the Song.  Title of the War Song, Title of the Irish Song, Title of the Magical Song...

Lyre Book?

So I've taken it into my head that a book for Saxon lyre would be a good thing to do.

But which one?  There are at least three different books I can think of.

1) Introduction to the Lyre.  That would be the one I wrote the Intro for - not particularly geared at the SCA re-enactor, just sort of a general overview of lyres and lyre-playing.

2) The Scop's Lyre.  This would focus on head learning (early period music and poetry), hands learning (lyre basics, improvisation) and historically-informed performance. 

3) The Glad Wood Sings.  A tunebook.  I hesitate to write a tunebook because of my personal inclination towards improvisation, but newcomers to the lyre list are always looking for songs to play. 

I'm leaning towards e-books in almost all cases, because it would let me embed video or audio media.  Although a print book with a DVD might work... but that's a lot of effort for something I wouldn't really expect to sell commercially.

Lyre Book: Introduction

The Saxon lyre is a simple instrument, but a versatile one.  Most lyre players discover the instrument on their own and develop a playing style through experimentation, leading to a great diversity of techniques.

The goal of this book will not be to exhaustively cover every possible way to play the lyre.  It will attempt to touch on several of the major schools of tuning, sounding and playing the lyre, and then eventually focus on one possible re-creation technique.  Whether or not this is the best technique for you will depend on what you want to do with your lyre.  You may wish to try several of the options presented until you find the one that best suits what you want to with your instrument.

Some lyre players are historical re-enactors, interested in creating a historically plausible Anglo-Saxon, continental Saxon or even Nordic musical experience.  Some lyre players are Asatru, for whom the lyre and its music are an important part of their religious ceremonies, and who want to use it to create or reinforce a particular emotional or spiritual state.  Some lyre players are in neo-medieval rock bands!  They may be interested less in what may have been done in the past, and want to experiment with what they can do now.  And some lyre players enjoy the instrument privately or personally, using it to relax or even to meditate with.

Some people want to sing along with their lyres; some want to recite poetry.  Some just want to play music.  They may want to play solo or in an ensemble.  All of these things will affect how you tune your lyre, how you pluck or strum it, and how you play on it and compose for it.

None of the possibilities are right; none of them are wrong.  They are all different, and it is up to the artist to evaluate them and select the one that is right for the artist.

Back to Bertrand de Born

At Kingdom Twelfth Night, I presented my setting of Bertrand de Born as "singable English."  Alas, it is, but not very singable.  There are some weird stresses and phrases.

Verse 1 is fine.

Verse 2 is... almost fine.  "And O! how my spirits adore" is currently set so that the stress is on "And", not "O!," which is where I keep wanting to put it.  Eh... it almost doesn't matter.  Shifting things so that the stress is on "O!" gets you spiRITS instead of SPIrits later, but it's not violently wrong-sounding.  I should pick a way and go with it.

Verse 3's ending is bad.  "For a soldier is soon forsaken / Unless he's given many blows and taken."  Eh?  Taken?  You'd want to avoid that, right?  So...

"For a solider will be food for the crows / Unless he's given many blows"

Verse 4 is okay, and a good place to stop.  I like how Verse 5 opens, but the rest of it... I can leave it.

Performer's Revel!

Storvik hosts a small, friendly event called Performer's Revel.  It's at a member's house.  We sit, we perform, we eat an awesome dinner.  It's great fun, and it's this Saturday.  We have once again been able to score a visit from Nana so that our childcare is taken care of - the Revel is not so great for the easily bored under-twelve set.

As Poeta, I'm sponsoring a challenge on the theme of Spring.  I'll be giving out tokens to all who participate - I'm thinking about 2' of trim to make a fillet and a flower.  It was just going to be flowers, but then what do you do with them? Well, with a fillet, you can wear it.  The hard part will be sticking to my guns about having it be recitative.  Personally, I think the distinction between poem and song is artificial, but it's there.  And people who don't sing may feel that they're at a disadvantage vis-a-vis those who do.  (And there's something to that.  A tune can cover up defects in versification.)

As the owner of a maypole, I'll be bringing that along.  A large group activity isn't the norm for the Revel, but if there is an event in Storvik where I think it would have a good reception, this is the event.  I need to print out the lyrics for Official Month of Maying, Maltese Cuckoo and May Pease.

I'm looking forward to giving "To Put the Devil Into Hell" a wider audience, trotting out the Holy Pork Chop song again, and possibly debuting The Shining Time of Spring.  (It might be a good lead-in to the maypole.)  I have half a notion to try and whip the Bertran de Born into performance shape, but it's really close to the event at this point.

GTP: Shining Spring V

Alternate first verse?

It is the shining time of spring, eya!
With flowers bright and birds on wing, eya!
And jealous husbands trouble bring, eya!
So now our queen would like to sing
To say and to tell that she is full of love

Hm....  I will think about it, but this one is 1) prettier and 2) foreshadows what 'action' the song has rather nicely.

GTP: Shining Spring IV

Shining spring is never late, eya!
Bringing joy to low and great, eya!
And jealous husbands irritate, eya!
Now our queen would like to state
To sing and to say that she is full of love

Go away, go away, jealous ones!
Leave us be, let us be
We shall all dance, together in the sun!

She has proclaimed it everywhere, eya!
On land and sea and in the air, eya!
That every youth and maiden fair, eya!
All should dance without a care
All should come with joy, should come and dance with us

Go away, go away, jealous ones!...

The King is coming with his lance, eya!
He says that he will stop our dance, eya!
He doesn't want to take the chance, eya!
That his Queen will find romance
That someone will steal his April Queen away

Go away, go away, jealous ones!...

Well, she doesn't like his plan, eya!
She doesn't want an older man, eya!
You know she wants a man who can, eya!
A man who knows so much more than
Only how to couch his lance and then to thrust

Go away, go away, jealous ones!...

If you saw our lady dance, eya!
Gracefully she does advance, eya!
With just but a single glance, eya!
You would know there is no chance
That there is a peer to our fair queen of joy

Go away, go away, jealous ones!...

_____________________________

"Go away" is just more fun to sing that "To the road."  "Hit the road" is too modern.

I ditched the end-rhymes for the last lines.  This version is just more singable.  Now to just practice it a bit to make sure that it flows...

GTP: Shining Spring III

As it turns out, Vladislav's page has mp3 and midi files, so I just listened to his version of the song.  It is indeed different from the two recorded versions I've heard.  (In addition to the Skye Consort, I first heard the song on this CD, by the Folger Consort, whose research is not to be sneezed at.)

Hrm... Skye Consort, on their YouTube page says:

A song in old French. There are lots of versions of this one and there is dispute about the transposition of the chorus but we weren't trying to be historically accurate, just playing a good tune....

So that might explain some of the variants.  I think the trouble is mostly the chorus, and especially the last line.  Poking around at Amazon, I found the Martin Best Ensemble's version which sounds like it has an awful lot of notes for that last "ballar entre nos, entre nos."

...oh wait, maybe they really do mean "transposition," not "transcription."  Here's another version and the chorus is definitely transposed. 

Go away, go away, jealous ones / To the road, to the road, jealous ones
Leave us be, let us be
We shall all dance, together in the sun

(There. Now at least 'sun' and 'ones' approximately rhyme.)

Speaking of rhymes... I'm waffling on changing the last lines of each verse.  As it stands now, they're meant to approximately rhyme with each other.  Which results in:

To sing and to tell that she is amorous

Not bad, and close to the original, but "that she is full of love" sounds more natural.

That someone will steal, his April Queen possess

This is my least favorite line in the whole translation, because of the sucky grammar.  "Steal" doesn't have an object, and so the idea of repetition doesn't quite work.  I can either do the folk song thing and subdivide something to squeeze in an object:

That someone will steal her, his April Queen possess

Now the second half of the line repeats the first half.  Or forget the rhyme:

That someone will steal his April Queen away

And then, oh yeah:

That there is no peer to our fair Queen Joyeuse

It's not her name, and she's not the queen of Joyeuse, France.  I'm given to understand the word means "joyful" in French; I learned it as the name of Lancelot's castle, Joyeuse Gard.  And it vaguely rhymes with "us" as "joyful queen" or "queen of joy" does not.

I am tending to think that the audience is not going to pick up on semi-approximate rhymes separated by an entire verse-refrain structure in a way that's anywhere near as important as having the words make sense to them.  But-but-but the proper form...

GTP: Shining Spring II

Chorus:
Go away, go away, jealous ones / To the road, to the road, jealous ones
Leave us be, let us be
We shall all dance, all dance most joyfully

Last verse:
If you saw our lady dance, eya!
Gracefully she does advance, eya!
With just but a single glance, eya!
You would know there is no chance
That there is no peer to our fair Queen Joyeuse

Some further resources:
Skye Consort performance of original
Sheet music (link down the bottom, page 2)

Now, I'm bad at sight-reading, but listening to the Skye Consort and looking at Vladislav the Purple's score, they don't seem to match.  Maybe it's because they sing faster than I can follow.

What I need to do:
1) Play the sheet music to see if it tallies with the tune in my head

2) Listen to the early music CD I have with this on it, and see if that tallies with the tune in my head (I may have learned it wrongly; I have a hard time getting this one, for some reason. Maybe the melismas.)

3) Make sure my translation can be sung.  It works to the tune in my head, and the verses at least can be fit under the notes in the score (although not the way they sound in my head)

4) Go back and make corrections as needed.