Saturday, December 01, 2007

Paris Psalter Singing

Well, thanks to some good suggestions by Derek the Ænglican (including a pointer to the really interesting Chantblog), and the work of one of my students (a brilliant English/Music double major with a minor in Medieval and Renaissance Studies), I now know what I need to do in order to chant the Paris Psalter at Anglo-Saxon Aloud. Unfortunately, I also know that I'm not ready to do it. I need to listen to more chant, particularly monophonic chant, and get the patterns in my head so that I can improvise around the natural Old English rhythm of the lines. This is going to take some practice and some work. So while I do that, I am going to post volume 6 of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems. That's often considered a silly title for a volume that includes the Battle of Maldon, the Battle of Brunanburh, The Fight at Finnsburh, and Cædmon's Hymn, which are certainly not "minor" in the sense of being trivial or less important. So I hope you'll enjoy those "minor" poem for the next few weeks. Then, when I've gotten to the "fragments of Psalms" in the Minor Poems volume, I should be up to the task of singing those and then the Paris Psalter. And I'll conclude the project, honor of my friend Joel Relihan, with the Meters of Boethius.

I'm hoping this will be done by Kalamazoo, so that I can give my paper on the project (assuming it is accepted). And then I hope to add some other things (like female voices for female-narrated poems) and harmony singing for some of the Psalms (I have two double majors in Voice and English who have taken Anglo-Saxon and are taking Beowulf in the spring). Then maybe a few of the more popular prose texts, like the Sermo Lupi. Suggestions are always welcome.

4 comments:

Dr. Virago said...

Ooh -- I vote for Sermo Lupi! An audio recording of those long lists of alliterative pairs of outrages is a pedagogical necessity!

Derek the Ænglican said...

Harmony singing, huh? Tackling organum is ambitious...but really cool when it comes together!

bwhawk said...

How much of the Old English corpus can we actually get you to read? The Sermo Lupi would be great (preferably the longest version, Bethurum's EI), and there are other great prose works like the A-S Chronicle, Bede's History, Alfric's Colloquy--the list could go on. Are there any more concrete plans for A-S Aloud once the poetic records are complete? It is quite an ambitious project, but coming together well, and so far sounds great. Quite a useful project for teaching Anglo-Saxon, too, as it gives students (undergraduates as well as graduates like myself) a real feel for the Old English sound. I'm eager to hear your paper on the project, and eager to see where it goes after the poems.

Bellebonnesage said...

Do you know Richard Crocker's _Introduction to Gregorian Chant_ (Yale UP, 2000)? It's my favorite single book on chant. If you want to learn to sing chant, you might enjoy reading Crocker on chant as music.