ATTENTION: This guy is awesome.

My harp-making husband and I have spent the last day or so drooling over this site:  http://crab.rutgers.edu/~pbutler/instrum.html

Paul Butler, aka Master Arden of Icombe, is a laurel in the East Kingdom who's dabbled quite successfully in medieval lutherie.  He's made a number of stringed instruments, chiefly from the medieval period although he's got one super-ancient lyre and one ren/baroque pochette.  He has detailed descriptions and pictures of the process he went through to make the instruments, which is obviously awesome.  Perhaps even more awesome - most of his pages include recordings of the instruments being played, and he's achieved some really nice sounds.  No recording of the Anglo Saxon lyre, though, which makes me sad, but it's pretty enough and in good enough company that I'm still overall quite happy. :-D  (Mostly I just want one.  Hearing one is the next best thing.  Seeing how one was made is a close third).

No harps, but that's ok because he plays them!  Check out the second mp3 - that's his gothic harp with the brays on.  Neat, huh?  Waaaaaaaaaant.

So nooooooooooow I want a rebec and a citole and an Anglo Saxon lyre (ok, I already wanted an Anglo Saxon lyre, but his site didn't exactly dissuade me).  Harps first.  Harps.  Harpsharpsharps.  Actually bookshelves first.  :-P  Then new folk harps, then a gothic harp and that's all if I'm reeeeeeeeally nice to my super-sexy-talented husband.  :-D  LOVE YOU HONEY!!!!  (harps)

Stuff Isolde is Not Allowed to Do:

Entry #84757:

There is an A&S competition coming up at Trillies where you earn points for each component of the piece that you made using period techniques.  So like...if I entered a scroll, I'd get extra points for having made the paper, mixed the pigment, cut the quill, etc, etc.

So I am NOT going to enter an original troubadour-style song with original harp accompaniment and documentation that reads, "I should get extra points for the following:
1)  Using period techniques to not write it down.  Troubadours didn't write down shit.
2)  Using period techniques to procure my harp.  Someone else made it, and now it's mine.  This is EXACTLY how the troubadours did it.
3)  I did not slaughter the sheep to harvest the guts for my strings.  Extra points for avoiding animal husbandry like any self-respecting troubadour.
4)  I expect to get laid as a direct result of my awesome song.  Even my motivation is period!"

I'm not going to enter that as documentation.  That would be sarcastic and wrong.  That said, I'm also probably not going to enter the competition.  I mean - I get it, and it's cool.  Encourage people to learn new things, get a better understanding of the items that would influence your art, etc.  I'm just a depth girl, rather than a breadth girl is all.  I'd rather take the time to write a really good song, and then play it on a harp made by someone who took the time to learn what he was doing.

My art doesn't produce physical items, so there aren't many arts that are really adjacent to it.  And those that are - ie, musical-instrument making - deserve the kind of devotion that music has already claimed from me.  That said - I expect to see some really awesome scribal and textile entries, and I'm looking forward to some quality drooling.  :-)

Ealdormere Crown Tournament

We moved up to Ealdormere just slightly too late for the reign of Quilliam and Dagmar - a bit disappointing, as I'd heard nothing but excellent things about them as people and as monarchs.  So I was pretty excited yesterday to watch 20-year-old Quilliam win his second crown.

Coming from an all-rapier background, I don't know nearly enough about heavy fighting for the blow-calling to make any sense.  But I can tell this - when everyone a person kills looks really happy about it coming off the field, that person is doing something very right.  Best I can tell, Quilliam fought with deadly honor, and I've not heard a soul breathe otherwise.

The rest of the day was filled to the brim with music, and I want to share this song by Lady Marie l'Englois.  She wrote it for Quilliam's first coronation, and reprised it most aptly at feast last night.

     

Northern Heir
... being a bardic retelling of the happenings at Ealdormere's XXIVth crown tourney, to the popular Elizabethan tune of Lord Willoughby's March

The last day of October in AS44
King Nigel sought a royal heir to lead his land to war.
The strongest northern fighters all gathered in the cold
To learn who would inherit the lupine crown of gold.

Syr Mordain and Syr Edouard both fought a valiant fight,
But in the end they fell before a stalwart squire and knight.
Syr Wat addressed the people in windblown Ard Chreag,
Then Quilliam showed his mettle with a heart-felt dialog.

He spoke of inspiration, and of a childhood dream,
He spoke about the baroness whom he would make his queen.
He spoke of his opponent, his honoured consort's knight,
And thanked him for the training that brought him to the fight.

When Quilliam finished speaking, Wat gave a bow profound.
The two embraced as brothers upon the tourney ground,
Then knight and hardy squire each other did assail
Until, for love of kingdom, young Quilliam did prevail.

My noble lords and ladies raise cups and voices high
For Adrielle and Nigel, and their heirs we name hereby,
For one spring day in Greyfells, bards of the trillium
Shall sing of the ascension of Dagmar and Quilliam.
         -Marie l'Englois, December ASXLIV

You can see a recording of Quilliam's speech and the ensuing bout here.  I love this song because it's got everything anyone could want in an SCA bardic piece - it's a stirring account of people we know doing great things and it's totally authentic.  Lady Marie wrote this to the tune of "Lord Willoughby's March," a song from period that recounts a person's accomplishments in battle.  Not only is the tune period, but the practice of melody-borrowing itself was common throughout period - in fact you can find a period filk of this very tune here (PDF).  It's even persona-appropriate - though Prince Quilliam is a Viking, Lady Marie is a 16th century English woman living in France.

Information on period printings of "Lord Willoughby" can be found here.  Lady Marie has a recording and the score available for download here.

And Waes Hael to Prince Qulliam and Princess Dagmar - may their reigns be fruitful and frequent!

How to be a Troubadour

Today at Caldrithig's Practicum, I'm teaching a new class about songwriting in the style of the troubadours.  In addition to basic cultural background, my course covers some musical and poetic features that make troubadour songs distinct, so that modern songwriters can more easily create original work in this classic medieval style.  If you'd like a copy of the handout, download this here PDF.

It seems to me that many bards in the SCA shy away from writing period-style songs because of a persistent belief that medieval music sounds "weird" and "inaccessible to a modern audience."  It is my firm belief that if people had a little more grounding in early music, they'd realize just how beautiful and universal it can be and would be quite a bit less intimidated by it.  People write what they hear, and if our most prominent bards are writing music that sounds nothing like medieval music, new bards will follow suit.  But when we take the plunge into more authentic sounding music, we make it easier for others to do so as well.  I hope this class will help to demystify troubadour music for those willing to try.

Why I'll play harp music from period if I damned well want to.

When last we met, I lamented the extreme paucity of harp music that survives in written form from period.  There's the Mudarra piece I mentioned for double-harp and, for the wire-strung harpists in the audience (ie - not me), there's the Robert ap Huw MS (recorded after 1600, though not by too terribly much, and certainly including much older songs).

BUT THAT WON'T STOP ME!!!  I have found, in my couple of years as a harping bard, that what I love the most is the sort of musical anthropology that goes along with early music.  Troubadour or early German music is more fun for me than later period stuff because we don't entirely know what it sounded like.  We have to use what little we do know in creative ways, like using the tuning of a lyre to tell us what a German harp c. 800 might have played or lists of who paid what to whom in X's court to figure out what instrumental accompaniment troubadours used.

And in the same vein, I get a kick out of recreating what we lack when it comes to period harp music.  Finding parallels between early harp and lute music and then creating new harp pieces based on that is even more fun than learning a pre-existing piece.  Just because we don't have the music doesn't mean we can't play something awfully close to what period harpers would have played.

And I find that to be terribly exciting.  ^_^

Why I can't play harp music from period.

Single-row harp c.1520

We all know what a harp looks like here.  It involves a single row of strings.  Modern concert harps have pedals that change the length of the strings, producing sharps and flats.  Modern folk harps have levers that do the same thing but require a hand to leave the strings to engage.  Harps in period had none of these - you played how your harp was tuned, or if you were really good you could fret a string to produce a sharp (this is impossible on modern folk harps given the string tension).

Lookit!  Two rows of strings!

Toward the end of period you also find harps with 2 or 3 rows of strings.  These harps had the same range as their single-row counterparts, but double or triple the strings meant strings for sharps and flats!  I have absolutely no interest in playing a double or triple harp.  The technique is wonky, the repretoire is overwhelmingly baroque (post-period and not really what I'm most into anyway) and my harp-making husband isn't a fan of their tone (I haven't really played around on one enough to hear for myself, but I tend to trust his judgment in these matters).

Now.  I've told you before that I'm arranging some lute music (Dowland right now) for harp to fill the gaping void that is period harp music.  There is exactly ONE piece designated for harp that survives from before 1600.  One.  And I have it on my computer.

This is the piece.  I promise this is music.

AND IT'S FOR EFFING DOUBLE HARP!!!!!  EFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!  I SO want to learn this piece.  It's our ONLY genuine piece of period harp music, and there are no transcriptions or recordings of it out there.  But I am NOT going to acquire and learn to play a double harp just so I can play ONE freaking piece!  I'm not!

Eff.  Effity eff-eff-eff!  I will transcribe it, though.  I'll transcribe it and see if it'll work on a pedal harp.  And if it will, I'll try to get a decent recording using one of my parents' pedal harps.  It won't be period, but at least it'll be OUT there!

And I'll keep going on Dowland and other lute music.  That's going really well, actually.  I'll post some of those pieces soon.

Raggin-fraggin double harp...

John Dowland for Harp

It seems that during the medieval and renaissance periods, there was a good deal of crossover between the lute and the harp.  Lute/harp was a popular duet pairing, and a piece published in 1546 (Alonso Mudarra's "Fantasia que contrahaze la harpa en la manera de Ludovico") draws a comparison between the harp and, in this case, the vihuela (a more guitar-like relative of the lute).

Given this, it seems that early lute repertoire would be a very reasonable place to look to fill the gaping void that is our collection of early harp music (it just hasn't survived, folks, and that sucks).  So I've embarked on a new project (yeah, I'm still working on those other ones, they're going fine).  I've just started transcribing a collection of John Dowland's lute pieces for harp.  It's the Folger manuscript, and according to the Folger library it was recorded by Dowland himself between the years 1594 and 1600, which makes it oh-so-suitable for the SCA.

I'm arranging it for lap-harp, of course.  My harp has 22 strings and no levers - harps in Dowland's period had up to 26 strings and no levers, so my transcriptions will be faithful to what a harp-playing contemporary of Dowland's would have played in those respects, at least.  I'm tackling "Frog Galliard" first, and this one I'm practicing up while I transcribe it (although I'll play through all of them to make sure they work, I'll only practice up the best ones - there are 61 pieces in the MS!).  Here's David Taylor playing it on the archlute:



I'm so pleased with this music so far - it's so much fun to play!  I think this collection of transcriptions, if it keeps going well, could be a valuable contribution to the small-harp repretoire out there.  There's not much out there for small harps (particularly without levers), and what there is frankly is not that technically challenging.  The songs in the Folger MS range from fairly simple to blisteringly difficult with many many levels in between.  And there's a duet!  This will give more advanced players something to keep them interested, beginning players something to work through as they progress and damnit, it'll show the world that serious classical music can be played on the small harp!  It was in period!  Why the hell aren't we doing it anymore???

Remember that motet I was working on?

So I was working on a motet, right?  And I was really jazzed about writing my first motet, but when it was all done, I couldn't shake the feeling that it sounded....off.  It sounded good, just....wrong.  I'd paid attention to form, and I thought I was being so clever with the chords, keeping them period, not resolving on thirds and stuff.  And for all that, it still came out sounding like a freaking act closer to a Boublil and Schönberg musical.  Aaaaaaaand, here's why:



That's right, I wrote a freaking 4-chord motet!  The chords themselves are all plausibly period, it's the chord progression that's completely absurd.  My motet has the same chord progression as freaking Lady Gaga - and eleventy-billion other songs, none of which were written when people were actually like, writing motets all the time for serious.  GARGH!!!

Anyway, this is where I need help from you friendly folks out in internet world, and if you're reading, I really hope you'll chime in.  For a person who's unapologetically focused on authenticity in her bardic work, would performing this in the SCA be completely laughable or what?  I really am smack on the fence about this.  Part of me thinks it was a good first shot at a motet and I should go for it, but part of me is like, "Really?  A 4-chord motet? Really?"

Y'know, if it were someone else asking my opinion, I'd wholeheartedly encourage them to sing it and be proud of the effort, the lesson learned and the sound of the final product.  All of my songs have anachronisms that I only learned about after writing them - that's unavoidable.  You can get more and more authentic with each song and each lesson learned, but there will always be something new to learn that exposes a mistake in your previous work.  That doesn't mean your previous work is bad or shouldn't be performed.

But dude, this is a smack-your-audience-in-the-face kind of mistake.  It's like shredding on a lute.  And I really don't want to be all, "This is a motet!" to people who don't know any better and then sing a FREAKING 4-CHORD ATROCITY!!!  Even (perhaps especially?) if it sounds good.

Anyway, it's all a wash unless I can find a really strong tenor to sing it with, so it may be a non-issue.  The best tenor I know lives in Northshield, and I don't know anyone here in Ealdormere.  Yet....

The Best of All Possible Loaner-Harps

Looooooooooook...

This is a gothic harp.  Harps like this were the standard in Europe during the late middle ages - around the 14th through 16th centuries.  She has 24 gut strings starting an octave below Gertrude's lowest note, and she has a gorgeously complex tone!  She's quieter than my nylon-strung Gertrude, of course, but not by nearly as much as I'd expected.  Her strings are also, of course, looser than Gertrude's (gut tends to be), which is taking a bit of adjusting to - I can't rip the hell out of her in the loud bits like I did Gertrude.  She has brays, but they're so stiff and difficult to turn on and off, I'm just leaving them all off.

I was offered this by contacts through the school of music - the professor in charge of the Early Music Ensemble set it up for me, and I'm sooooooo glad he did!  Aeron should have a new neck and pillar done for Gertrude in a couple of weeks, but I think I'll keep playing this harp with the Early Music Ensemble for the rest of the semester, and bring Gertrude to events.  She's just that cool, and that period.  And so gorgeous!

D's been working on one much like this in our living room for a while now.  His will be shorter (a good thing - this one is just too large to hold in my lap the way I like to), but the same range (don't ask me how that works - I do languages, not physics).  The joinery will be better, and the brays more usable, thanks in part to having this one to look at.

I'll be at Bardic Madness next weekend, able to play all of my songs on this harp.  Even "Beer is for Girls."  I am pleased and excited!