Mi Contra Fa

KASF: Sealing wax

I popped down to UMD's McKeldin Library this morning to take notes on a book about medieval English seals.  It mentioned that the earliest wax seals were beeswax and mostly white, with one brown one (may be discolored green or red) surviving. Later (doesn't give a starting date), resin could be added.

Wait, wait.  "Mostly white"? I bought beeswax pastilles, and they are uniformly yellow.  Did "white" mean "uncolored"?  I Googled "how to bleach beeswax."

Yeah, apparently you can easily bleach beeswax by leaving it out in the sun, thus turning it white.  The process should take 4-7 dayshttp://beemaniacs.com/beeswax/bleaching-beeswax/, depending on how much sun you get and how strong it is.

WISH I'D KNOWN THAT LAST WEEK.

I've got my pastilles in trays now, sitting in our sunniest window.  Not sure how bleached they'll get between now and OH MY GOD I HAVE TO GET EVERYTHING PACKED FOR KASF but we'll see.

I want to make several batches of wax:

1. Plain white beeswax
2. Red beeswax
3. White beeswax + resin (2:1)
4. Red beeswax + resin (2:1)

 

Authenticity and Me, 2016

Yesterday, my blog analytics showed me a few hits to an old essay of mine, "Authenticity and Me, 2001."  Now, I chose to put that essay up on this site in 2008-ish, so a slightly more recent past-me approved it, but I still get a slight knot of anxiety when I see something like that.  Holy cow, that was 15 years ago!  What if I was young and dumb?  What did I say?

So I reread it, and I'm relieved to find that I think I still believe it's mostly true.  In summary: I wrote that period bardic performance is awesome, but it would be a shame to have no bardic performance at all, if we insisted on Only Period Performance.

That's pretty much the SCA's strategy, after all.  Make "an attempt at pre-17th century" whatever - garb, food, gear, entertainment - and you're good.  We welcome the novice, the curious, the dabbler, and the people with strong interests in one area but not another.  We are a big-tent organization, and it's one of our strengths.

I think I have only one real update to add since 2001.  It's important to understand why modern folk performance has such a hold on the SCA at large.  My hypothesis: All of us live in the modern world, and we are soaking in modern music.  It is used by everyone from advertising jingle writers to pop musicians to movie score composers to hymn writers to Broadway shows to elicit emotional response.

Now go ask some Scadians why they like bardic circles.  A substantial fraction will say something along the lines of "it offers a moment of transport" - it elicits a feeling of being long ago and far away.  This is what we imagine the Middle Ages to feel like.  We want the entertainments at the bardic to conform not to what the Middle Ages were, but - as we are fond of saying - the Middle Ages as they should have been.  (Or perhaps how we imagine them to be.)  We want to hear SCA hymns, songs of praise to the values of courtesy, honor and chivalry upon which our Society is based.  Or SCA anthems, songs uplifting our kingdom and the people who dwell there.  And most importantly, we want these things to be presented in the musical language that knows how to touch our hearts.

And that is  a modern musical language.

I love period music and period performance.  I do think there is a path that can tread between these two goals - period performance and pulling modern heartstrings - but it's difficult to find and to navigate.  It's already hard to write a song that resonates strongly across a kingdom; it's even harder to write that song in a period style. This is why modern performance remains so extremely popular, and why the bardic arts lag so many others when it comes to progress towards period. 

Even cooking, which is also a matter of taste, has stepped up its game enormously since I joined the SCA 20 years ago.  We learned to value medieval flavors and textures on their own merits, and as we ate these foods together in community, I suspect they began to acquire their own socio-emotional significance.  Still, I doubt very many people ask for a Tart in Ymbre Day when they need comfort food.

I don't say any of this to discourage period performance or to write it off as impractical.  I encourage it and practice it.  However, once I realized why modern performance remains so popular - because it fills an important emotional need - I became much more at peace with its dominance.  When period performance can feed that same emotional, or even spiritual, hunger, then it has a chance of assuming pride of place.  Until then, it's a pleasant educational diversion or interesting background music - but it will not be the song of our SCA lives.

KASF: The final week

Banner, quills, and will are 98% done.  All I need to do is figure out how I'll be displaying them.  (Like, I should make some index cards with samples of the writing from each quill, and probably bring ink so judges can try them if they like.)

A trip to the library tomorrow morning, a batch of sealing wax, and a final revision to the documentation puts the seal to bed.

Beowulf lags.  I need to practice it with the harp and the chanting, and decide exactly how much of it I'm going to do.  And then, the documentation. I started it yesterday, and... oy.  Little hard to summarize ten years of learning into a short article.

Writing Display - which will be a PSA in support of A&S/Chronicler teaming - has a sketch, but I have to actually generate content, print it out, and slap it on the foamcore.  Should happen this weekend.

I've had a great time doing this.  As in 2014, I found Pentathalon to be a great motivator.  I got more done in a month than I generally get done in several. It gives me a reason to do the things I've been meaning to get around to doing, like the calligraphy, and a reason to try things way outside of my usual practice, like the casting.  IMO, I've already won.

DOUBLE WOOHOO

I first did my Beowulf performance at Chalice of the Sun God in October 2014. So the performance is just over a year old. 

In that year, I've been poking at a musically-enhanced version - sort of singing/chanting in a liturgical recitative way.  And I feel like it's really coming together.  But - can I authenticate it?

I have not been hitting the books over this.  I have been educating my ear by listening to good recordings for ages, but that's hard to document.  And I know better than to backwards-justify stuff.  But I thought it was worth a look, to find the right words to describe what I was aiming for.

I pulled down Hoppin's 'Medieval Music' and started going through the Gregorian chant section.  And there were the eight psalm tones.  (It blows my mind that my childhood church used thousand year old music for the psalms, but Psalm Tone 8 - that's it, that's what they used.)  And the seventh...

The ...crap, incipit? introit? the starting part... of the seventh psalm tone was exactly the cadence I was using.  Granted, I was using it as a closing, not a beginning.  But still!  I'd accidentally re-created the same melodic motif.  And the cadence from Psalm Tone 7 was close to the... crap, median? the middle intonation part that keeps the tenor from being too boring... I was using.

I'm not totally church-authenticable - I do a sort of secondary drone down by tonic sometimes, and I think may be in A minor rather than mixolydian mode.  (My chanting tone is D, which is mixolydian, but my final wants to be A, I think.  Mixolydian's final is G.)

BUT HOLY AMAZEBALLS I COMPOSED SOMETHING IN A VERIFIABLE PERIOD STYLE BY EAR.

I am pretty pleased with myself.

WOOHOO

IT WORKED

 

The S in Sigillum is a little wonky, but it doesn't even show much in the impression. It isn't perfect but I LOVE IT.

KASF: Casting seals - Now we wait

The Play-Doh Original

The copy of the seal made out of Play-Doh seems to be working all right.  It cracked a bit on the front and a lot on the back - shrinking as it dried.  I think all the incised lines on the front helped reduce cracking there.  I tested it in the Petrobond and it made a pretty good impression.  Some of the finer lines on the letters got sand stuck in them, and I used files to try to widen them.  Dry Play-Doh sort of files all right.  I also filed the surface a little, taking off various petrified crumbs of Doh.

Making the Impression

I tried two ways of getting the impression in the Petrobond:

1. As I saw on the Internet, put the original face-up on the bottom of the mold, put sand on top, press hard.  Flip over, remove original.
2. Place loose Petrobond into the mold, press original face-down into it.  Press additional sand around edges. Remove original.

Both had similar problems: Sand sticking in the finer lines, and the edges crumbling as I tried to remove the original.  It was slightly easier with Method 1 (because the edges were more firmly packed).  So after several attempts, I got an impression that looked mostly okay.

Doing the Casting

I took my camp stove out back, placing the mold (on some scrap wood) next to it.  I put on safety gear: jeans over my leggings, steel-toed boots, heavy leather work gloves, a wool coat, and safety goggles.  Stove on, pan with ingot on stove.  I held the heat at low to medium for a while, not wanting to over-heat the pewter.  (The antimony separates out when you do that.)  Nothing happened and nothing happened, so I turned up the heat. Instantly, the ingot began to melt.  It happened pretty fast, actually, and then I poured the metal into the mold.  I didn't use the casting ladel I bought - it was far too small.  I overpoured - the surface tension kept the metal from running over the surface of the mold, but it's bubbled out the back. sigh.  I didn't do any tapping or shaking of the mold, so hopefully the metal got into all the spots it needed to.

It's out back now, cooling.

Doubts

This was never going to be a 100% authentic piece, as lead-free pewter was never a thing.  But now the entire process has become modern - Play-Doh, Petrobond.  My seal is not, in the details, a good replica of an original - my letters, for instance, are 'Arial' sans serif linework, whereas the originals tended to have triangular cross-sections and serifs.

I mean, I'm glad I'm making it, because I think seals are cool.  But is this a good Pentathalon entry?

Game birds roasting on an open fire

Doing my usual shilly-shallying about my entries.  Is the casting too modern?  (See next post.)  Should I cook instead?

What I would cook: roasted small birds and flatbread, based on the Bayeux tapestry:

Possibly flatbreads cooked on a grill or griddle

Meat chunks and small birds on spits on some sort of firepit

 

I've experimented with cooking flatbreads already.  Ann Hagen has some good information on bread and its preparation.  There's a reference to kneading dough, although I have to wonder if the high-moisture "mix and let sit" method is more practical for cooking for literally an army.  I could do both, not hard.

I looked up 'roast chicken over campfire' to see about that.  Everyone said, cut holes through the spit and use a skewer to secure the meat.  Made sense, but I didn't see it in the picture above.  But then I looked at the other picture of bird-on-a-stick in the tapestry:

Skewers!

Skewers, right through the legs!

The other thing that bothered me was that the cooking image shows the skewers nearly vertical, not horizontal like I'm used to seeing spits.  But - beer can chicken!  People do roast chickens vertically.  Some people think it's a better way to do it.  Certainly seems sensible, logistically - put your meat on your skewers, stick them in the ground in front of the fire.  No needing to find dozens of Y-shaped branches and set up giant rotisseries for the camp.  Makes serving easier (as shown), lets you pull the done ones when they're done, and let the others keep cooking. 

I'm looking into possible poultry now.  I'm thinking game birds - quail, partridge, squab.  Although it's not impossible (or even unlikely) that invading Normans could have knocked over someone's henhouse.  If the birds are the same scale as the hand in the image above, quail might be too small. (But they'd cook quickly and be adorable!)

 

KASF: Pewter casting setback, calligraphy done

Petrosand sticks to beeswax.  My original came out of the casting sand with clumps stuck to it and its impression utterly obliterated.

I'm trying Play-Doh now.  I wonder if bone might have been used originally?

Will and quills are done, including documentation.

KASF: Bumpy bits

Bone Flute: Not working.  I got the soundhole shaped pretty well, but maybe too small.  Put in a wax fipple.  Goes 'fffffp.'  I don't know what's wrong, and the cow bone is really thick and takes forever to shape.  Maybe sheep would be better (but then I have to clean it and saw the joints off).

Quill: After two turkey quills going great, the goose quill goes all splintery and crappy.  Meh.  Using a turkey quill to do the will.

Will: About half done and going okay.  My calligraphy is not the best.  Accidentally put the wrong name down, but I may be able to scrape off some letters and redo.  (I've already scraped off one mistake and done over, so that works.)  I used my bone folder, a compass and straight edge to blind rule the pergamenata.  

Seal: I have all the parts, now just waiting for the weather to be slightly warmer and not raining/snowing.

Banner: Documentation updated.

Beowulf: Documentation update in progress. Need to review the material itself.

A more historical gold-embroidered banner

William of Malmesbury, an early 12th century chronicler, writes (c. 1125) that on the morning of Hastings:

The king [Harold] himself on foot, stood, with his brother, near the standard; in order that, while all shared equal danger, none might think of retreating. This standard William sent, after the victory, to the pope; it was sumptuously embroidered, with gold and precious stones, in the form of a man fighting. (276)

Gesta Regum Anglorum, trans. John Sharpe, ed. J.A. Giles. "William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the Kings of England," Henry G. Bohn: London, 1845.

It's supposed to be referenced in this work by William's priest, too, but I can't find it.  And Bede says King Oswald had a gold-embroidered banner, but that's way back in the 7th century.  Should still find the citation, somewhere in Bede's book 3 (possibly chapter 11).