{"id":7576,"date":"2019-02-22T11:29:48","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T16:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/?p=7576"},"modified":"2024-04-22T14:37:07","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T18:37:07","slug":"charms-riddles-and-elegies-of-the-medieval-northlands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/2019\/02\/22\/charms-riddles-and-elegies-of-the-medieval-northlands\/","title":{"rendered":"Charms, Riddles, and Elegies of the Medieval Northlands"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday, March 1, the renowned medieval music ensemble Sequentia will perform a series of Medieval Northlandic charms, riddles, and elegies at Swarthmore College. In this world-premiere performance, director, harpist, and vocalist Benjamin Bagby and his colleagues, vocalist and harpist Hanna Marti, vocalist Stef Conner, and flutist Norbert Rodenkirchen, will chant and sing these songs in Old English, Old High German, and Old Icelandic, displaying English Professor Craig Williamson\u2019s original translations. Professor Williamson\u2019s translations are taken from his recently published book\u00a0The Complete Old English Poems<\/em>, and these translations largely inspired Bagby to construct the musical lineup.<\/p>\n

According to Professor Williamson, he and Bagby became interested in each others\u2019 academic work on\u00a0Beowulf<\/em>\u00a0about ten years ago. Since then, they\u2019ve built a friendship centered on passion for medieval studies. After Professor Williamson published\u00a0The Complete Old English Poems\u00a0<\/em>in 2017, Bagby was \u201coverwhelmed\u201d with its \u201cbeauty and its depth,\u201d and, after corresponding with each other in the same year, Professor Williamson and Bagby planned this performance to showcase both Sequentia\u2019s and Professor Williamson\u2019s talents.<\/p>\n

Among the pieces that Benjamin Bagby and Sequentia will perform are Old English riddles. Though Anglo-Saxon riddles are not set to music, what makes them special are their humor and sexual suggestiveness; they are the modern day equivalent of \u201cdirty jokes\u201d, except Old English Riddles have both a clean and \u201cdirty\u201d answer. In addition, the group will sing the Anglo-Saxon magic charm of\u00a0Nine Herbs<\/em>, a story of healing; the Old Icelandic\u00a0Song of Grotti\u2019s Milestone,<\/em>\u00a0the narrative of the rebellion of two slave girls against their king;\u00a0Deor<\/em>, the lamentation of a tribal singer rejected by his chieftain; the lament of the last survivor from\u00a0Beowulf<\/em>; and \u00a0Wulf and Eadwacer<\/em>, a mysterious lament of a woman cut off from her lover, and some of the oldest recorded songs from the German-speaking people.<\/p>\n

Listening to Sequentia\u2019s performance, even if one is familiar with medieval music, is still worthwhile because no two performances of the same Medieval song will ever be the same. We usually think of music based on a certain song\u2019s melody. However, medieval songs are \u201cbased on beats,\u201d explains Professor Williamson. \u201cWe don\u2019t really know the tunes. Music was never really written down in any of the Anglo-Saxon and Old Germanic languages…we have to reconstruct the melody.\u201d So, one singer might perform the same song in a completely different way than another performer. This is especially true of Benjamin Bagby who, according to Professor Williamson, takes a more \u201cstorytelling\u201d and \u201cacting\u201d approach in his performances.<\/p>\n

In fact, Professor James Blasina of the Music Program hopes that his students will be inspired by Benjamin Bagby and Sequentia\u2019s unique performance and see \u201cthe strong links between academic study and musical performance.\u201d Professor Blasina says that it is tempting sometimes to try to to separate \u201chistory and context\u201d and \u201c what is often referred to as the \u2018music itself,\u2019\u201d when, in reality, \u201cthere is no such thing as the \u2018music itself,\u2019 and in order to understand the music, you have to understand more than just the notes on the page.\u201d Benjamin Bagby and Sequentia, Professor Blasina says, exemplify just that. \u201cTo have them here is pretty spectacular,\u201d Professor Blasina says, and he along with the Music Program feels so fortunate to be able to hear them perform live and interact with them in the classrooms.<\/p>\n

If one is not familiar with Medieval music, however, Professor Blasina says we can still \u201cappreciate the beauty of [the music] and find it interesting\u201d simply by \u201clistening to the aesthetics of the sound.\u201d He also suggests paying particular attention to the humor in the text as a way to relate to these songs that might seem out of reach for some. Professor Blasina says that in much Medieval music, there is a \u201cvery strong sense of reverence, but also a very strong sense of irreverence.\u201d Though it may seem ironic and paradoxical, this opposition is essential in portraying the humor and Professor Blasina says \u201cif we can find the humor in that music\u201d and \u201cfind the same things funny…that is one way to connect to other human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Williamson is also a firm believer that, even though the songs Sequentia will be performing are from centuries ago, \u201cthere are elements of [the music] that cross the bridge between cultures and between times and between genders.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were human beings,\u201d Professor Williamson says. \u201cMaybe they lived a different kind of life than we lived, but they had lovers, they had children, they had sorrows, they had joys…there are many ways in which they are like us.\u201d In listening to Benjamin Bagby and Sequentia\u2019s performance, Professor Williamson hopes that the audience will be able to see \u201cwhat\u2019s shared and what\u2019s human between two times and two people\u201d and form a profound connection that \u201ccrosses the bridge across time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The event is sponsored by the Cooper Foundation and will take place on Friday, March 1, in the Lang Concert Hall at 8 p.m.<\/p>\n

\n

Maria Consuelo de Dios ’21<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday, March 1, the renowned medieval music ensemble Sequentia will perform a series of Medieval Northlandic charms, riddles, and elegies at Swarthmore College. In this world-premiere performance, director, harpist, and vocalist Benjamin Bagby and his colleagues, vocalist and harpist Hanna Marti, vocalist Stef Conner, and flutist Norbert Rodenkirchen, will chant and sing these songs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":7577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7576"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7576"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7578,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7576\/revisions\/7578"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}