Mi Contra Fa

"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. 

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

More on Roland

So hey, like a year ago I was thinking about translating the Norweigan version of the Song of Roland.  I did a little more poking around today, after discovering one of the links I'd found last year died.

(Oh... did I miss the blog's birthday?  I think I did.  Happy Birthday, Blog!)

One sheet music vendor identified the tune as being from the Faroe Islands.  Huh?  I thought it was Norweigan.  I thought the answer was here, in an awful Google translation of a Norweigan page.  It looks like the lyrics were collected sometime in the 1800s and a folklorist (specializing in dance) put the words to Faroese music in 1921.  (That page cites a 1985 edition of her work, but it was published in 1921 according to this automatically translated website.) 

Except if you look at the music, or even the lyrics, that's a different song.  It's about Roland, but it's a different song about Roland. Drawing board, I return to it.

There is this Norweigan book, but at first look, I think it's the Old French chanson translated into Norweigan. Sort of like our Penguin edition.

A list of Norweigan folk song collectors seems like a reasonable place to start looking for their Cecil Sharp or Child.  I can confirm that MB Landstad's Norske folkeviser does not contain the Roland I want, just the "Roland and Magnus" ballad.  For that matter, none of these three books appear to.

Hm... Leden recorded Inuit music.  Lindeman and Sandvik might be promising; not enough details on Olea Crøger to really say, so I should see what books are in her name.

Why?  I dunno.  I am perfectly content to say this is a folk song, not a medieval ballad.  I just want to nail down when it was first recorded.

Winter University 2012

I went, I taught, I had a great time!

On the trip down, I stopped at Duke University to view a microfilm copy of Christopher Page's 1981 dissertation on "Anglo-Saxon Hearpan: History, tuning and techniques."  It was awesome, and three hours was not enough to take all the notes I wanted.  But I was a clever monkey, and noticed that the microfilm box came from the British Library.  So, once home again, I Googled "British Library thesis."

Behold, EThOS!  The Electronic Thesis Online Service of the British Library, which will let you download FREE PDFs of digitized British theses.  Including (drumroll) Page's from 1981.  Hurrah!

I stayed in the lovely and affordable Augustus T. Zevely Inn in Old Salem, where I met Lord Mungo Napier and his lovely wife, Lady Sarah.  Alas that the historic Salem Tavern was closed for kitchen repairs.

Getting to the event was easy enough.  I took Master Efenwealt's helpful and informative class on DIY recording and got some useful hints and tricks.  Then it was time for my teach-a-thon.

'Writing a Research Paper' had but five students, although they were wonderful and engaged students.  I felt it went a little unevenly in parts, but overall seemed like it went well.  I should have the class notes posted today.

'Constructive Criticism' went very, very well!  A large class, with lots of back and forth - almost more of a workshop.  The students raised the difficult but very relevant question of what to do if we saw/heard another judge being unnecessarily harsh and mean, and I think we eventually decided that the right thing to do would be to say something.  (We were trying to balance minding one's own business/not escalating drama with damage control, and concluded that stopping real damage was more important.)

'Research and Documentation for the Bardic Arts' also had good turnout and vocal, involved students.  I've come up with a refinement not in the current handout - about Information Search being used to find content, context, and performance information, which I quite like and helps organize that section much better.  I'll try to do an update soon.

But I did leave with a sense that I need to be doing a bit more actual performing.  Of course, we've been mostly out of the SCA since The Boo was born two years ago; that's just the nature of the small, grabby beast.  But as the outdoor spring events start up, we're going to try to make more of them. We'll probably have to leave before feast/bardic, but it's a start!