Mi Contra Fa

Epics

I have this idea that I should do a big old series of story-songs.  Choosing the subject matter is the hard part.

• A few years ago, I wanted to do a Love Story cycle composed of translations of existing poems (Veni delectissime, Wulf and Eadwacer, Deor, Love's Longing, and The Husband's Message). They're all lyrics (I think), not narratives, but they look kind of like a story if you line them up and squint.
• Parts of the Heaney Beowulf.
• Eustace the Monk.  He's a swashbuckling monk-pirate-sorcerer-mercenary, and some version of him actually existed.
• Ditto on Hereward the Wake.  He was Robin Hood before Robin Hood was Robin Hood.
• I've already done a prose version of part of the Nibleung.  That whole cycle has tons and tons of stuff.
• Oh my gosh, I've been reading about the Merovingian Franks and they're like a freaking soap opera.  Even if you figure Brunhilde and Fredegunde were made 50-100% more villainous than they actually were by the churchmen they pissed off, they're still pretty amazing.

Garb Wars winner!

The Storvik team won at Garb Wars!

I couldn't attend the event because of family stuff, but I was on the team as a researcher.  I put together a 19-page report detailing all of the decisions that went into planning a mid-6th century Kentish ensemble for Meisterin Johanna.  I have not inserted that many footnotes into anything since my dissertation.

Obviously, the on-site team who actually spent 24 hours cutting and sewing deserve the lion's share of the applause - a report is great, but makes a terrible dress.  I am still very happy to have been able to help.

I'm removing the copywritten content from the report before I post it.

Update of many things

Performance

The "Song" section of 'Singer of Tales' was not actually about music - more about the text of songs/lyrics.  I need to fold some of that work into my Standard Performance Reference.

Naalbinding

I learned to do the Mammen stitch!  Storvik's Early Northern European Adhocracy sponsored a class by Magistra Sigrid Briansdottir.  I've finished my first lumpy mitten and am working on its mate.  What I really want to make are some socks.  While not strictly authenticatable to my usual time/place, neither are my linen hose.

Garb Wars

I am the research monkey on Storvik's team.  We've got the elements of the project established, I have taken many notes, and now it's time to write up Three Bears reports (one that's too long, one that's too short, and one that's just right).

Site Maintenance

I just don't have the time right now, but I've got all sorts of documentation and reports and classes I could be posting, never mind some poems and songs, and oh the project pages still need done.  :p

 

Singer of Tales

I've had a copy of Lord's "Singer of Tales" for ages and never got past the Introduction.  I finally just skipped the rest of it and started in on how the Serbian singers actually did their thing.

Oral-formulaic theory has made such an impact that I'm not surprised that its fountainhead feels very familiar to me. 

• Lord outlines three stages of a performer's career: 1) passively listening to epics and absorbing their form, style, content, structure, etc.; 2) initial practice and mastery of one's first song; 3) performance of that song for a critical audience.  After 3), the singer goes on to refine his art and learn more songs. 
• Songs are not learnt by heart, but rather composed and re-composed extemporaneously at every performance - sometimes abridged, sometimes lengthened
• But certain songs or sections of songs can become "stable" with repeated performance, changing little
• Verbal formulas that fit the poetic pattern are a part of the vocabulary of poetic language.  (We see this in English balladry with, among other figures, the "two-syllable-word steed" - the milk white steed, the nut-brown horse, and the fastest horse.)

What did catch my eye were the printed musical examples.  The gusli, the accompaniment instrument, has one string that can be stopped for - wait for it - five notes.  The melodies looked very stepwise.  The gusli tended either to drone on a single note, or shadow the vocal line. Depending on how fast the vocal melody went, it either followed it exactly or else picked out certain important notes - but it definitely wasn't doing harmony or countermelody.  This is how I've been doing my singing-with-lyre, so yay.  Then, after the words for that poetic line, there'd be a few bars of gusli solo, often very rapid notes.  So it's not that they couldn't play fast, it's that playing fast while you're also composing poetry off the cuff is really freaking hard.

All the guslars interviewed, except for the blind beggars, were not professionals. They were semipro at best, having day jobs like herder or coffee shop owner, but they'd earn some extra scratch entertaining at coffee shops during the evenings of Ramadan.  That might be important - professionals could have more time to devote to elaborate accompaniment than regular dudes. 

The next chapter is all about the song and music, so it should be very interesting!

Focus

Also -

I've been hitting the self-help books recently, and have been struck by a theme of doing less but doing it well.  I have a notion to focus more on my music, poetry, and performance, and do a bit less with the textile arts and such. 

Return to ap Huw

I get the impression that every so often, I get pulled back toward the ap Huw manuscript, get very excited about it, and then totally forget about it.

I've got Karen Marshalsay's book, for instance, on the ap Huw ornaments.  I've even managed to learn a few.  But it's the cerdd dant, the 24 measures of Welsh music, that have my attention this time. I'm still dipping into it, but the cerdd dant are represented in a binary notation: 11001011, for example.  1's are home notes (or figures of notes?), 0's are aways.  Home is tonic; away is a step below tonic.  This page talks about it some more, and gives an example of a Scottish pibroch bagpiping tune that follows the 11001011 pattern.  Each 1 is a rising third from home, and each 0 is a rising third from away.

Don't that look just like the rising fifths I do (on home and away) to accompany poetry recitation?

So I hauled out the harp and tried the same 11001011 pattern, using fifths instead of thirds, and throwing in some grace notes via thumb chokes (descending grace notes) and fallings (rising grace notes - the thumb is the thing that's falling) per Marshalsay's book.  And HEY WOW that's loads better than plain old re-la, re-la, ti-so, ti-so etc. and so forth.

Here's a link soup on cerdd dant.  I want to come back to this and dig a little deeper, try to find the actual 24 patterns.  (Master Gregory Blount of Isenfir has the original manuscript scanned, because of course he does, so I can go get that if no one's conveniently transcribed it elsewhere yet.)

Simon Chadwick's list of books on Welsh music

Cerdd Dant Society of Wales (I think?)

A Tolkien fan's article on cerdd dant, with good resources

Wire Branch of the Clarsach Society article

Bill Taylor article on it.  I have his "Two Worlds of the Welsh Harp" CD, and he's generally considered the leading interpreter of the MS.

Article on musical group Bragod, who've crossed my radar before.  Some information on cerdd dant.

A PDF of Chapter 1 of... someone's thesis? on ap Huw?

Edit: Ah, more of the good stuff:

Peter Greenhill's 1995 magnum opus on the MS

Important paper by Bill Taylor, plus the rest of the periodical's contents

Paul Dooley's website (still under construction as of a year ago). Do I have his CD?  Dooley is another interpreter of the MS.

Master Gregory's page of resources, including a scan of the MS

Edit again:

Bragod's website has a huge tutorial.  Huzzah!  The 24 measures!