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A Mediæval Triptych - Concert 1:The Rheingold Curse A Germanic Saga of Greed and Vengeance
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 Concert Details |
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Sequentia:
Benjamin Bagby voice, harp (director)
Agnethe Christensen voice (Brynhild), drum
Lena Susanne Norin voice (Gudrun)
Elizabeth Gaver fiddle
Norbert Rodenkirchen flutes, harp
This event in cooperation with the UBC School of Music is also supported by the Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies at UBC.
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Friday, January 22, 2010 | This project was made possible through the generous support of Elaine Adair |
| Pre-Concert Introduction by Benjamin Bagby at 7:15 | Concert at 8:00 pm | ||
| UBC Recital Hall | ||
| 6361 Memorial Road, UBC campus | directions |
for information on Ticket Prices and Seating Plans.
Tickets for this concert at $33 (students & seniors $3 discount) are available on-line, or by phone from the office of Early Music Vancouver, and also from Sikora’s Classical Records, from Kestrel Books, or from Tickets Tonight: 604 684-2787 or www.ticketstonight.ca.
Rush Seats for Students with valid ID on sale for $10, at the door only, from 7:00 pm on the evening of the concert.
This concert is included in our “Bring a Youth for Free” programme.
Series Tickets for all 3 concerts of The Mediæval Triptych:
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| Theme |
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Reconstruction, by Benjamin Bagby, of the ancient Germanic Rheingold story from the Old Icelandic Edda. This is the oldest-known witness to the story of gold, greed and revenge which captivated Europe for centuries and which served as the basis for Richard Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen cycle. Three singers are joined by two instrumentalists to tell the story of Fafnir the dragon, the dwarf Regin, Sigurd the young hero, the Valkyrie Brünnhild and her beautiful rival, Gudrun; Atli the murderous Hunnish chieftain and many others. The story is framed by the visionary prophecy of the Seeress, telling of the beginning and ending of the world.
| Programme |
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Poems from the Old Icelandic Edda, with instrumental accompaniment and interludes.
Translations of the sung texts will be video-projected during the performance.1 |
Hlióðs bið ek allar kindir (Völuspá / The Prophecy of the Seeress, part 1) | |
| Rodenkirchen (swan’s bone flute); Christensen & Norin (voices) |
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2 |
Óðinn ok Hœnir ok Loki (Reginsmál / The Lay of Regin) | |
| Bagby (voice & lyre) |
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3 |
Sveinn oc sveinn (Fafnismál / The Lay of Fafnir) | |
| Gaver (fiddle); Christensen, Norin, & Bagby (voices); Rodenkirchen (flute) |
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4 |
Hvat beit brynio, hví brá ec svefni (Sigrðrífomál / The Lay of Sigrdrifa [Brynhild]) | |
| Christensen & Bagby (voices); Rodenkirchen (flute) |
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5 |
[instrumental interlude] | |
| Gaver (fiddle) & Rodenkirchen (flute) |
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6 |
Ár var, thatz Sigurðr sótti Giúka (Sigurðarkviða in Scamma / The Lay of Sigurd, part 1) | |
| Gaver (fiddle); Bagby, Christensen & Norin (voices) |
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7 |
Ár var, thatz Guðrún gorðiz at deyia (Guðrúnarkviða in Fyrsta / The First Lay of Gudrun) | |
| Bagby & Rodenkirchen (lyres); Norin (voice) |
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8 |
Kona varp önðo, enn konungr fiorvi (Sigurðarkviða in Scamma / The Lay of Sigurd, part 2) | |
| Bagby & Christensen (voices) |
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9 |
Mær var ec meyia, móðir mic fœddi (Guðrúnarkviða önnor / The Second Lay of Gudrun) | |
| Gaver (fiddle); Norin & Christensen (voices) |
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10 |
Atli sendi ár til Gunnars (Atlakviða / The Lay of Atli) | |
| Rodenkirchen (flute); Christensen (drum); Bagby (voice & lyre); Norin (voice) |
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11 |
That man hon fólcvíg fyrst í heimi (Völuspá / The Prophecy of the Seeress, part 2) | |
| Gaver (fiddle); Christensen, Norin & Bagby (voices); Rodenkirchen (swan’s bone flute) |
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In 2002 this programme was released as a double CD on the Marc Aurel Edition label (www.aurel.de) |
| Programme Notes |
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The Rheingold Curse: Introduction
Most of early Germanic history is a collection of fragments, hearsay, reports from homesick Romans and a few surviving objects found in scattered burial mounds. The facts are few, but we do know this much: at a time when the Romans were losing their grip on a vast colonial empire, a wandering tribe of warlike Germanic people from the Baltic coast came to central Europe, finally settling on the Rhine River in 413 and agreeing to an alliance with the Empire. But these ambitious folk, who were called Burgundians, expanded a little too fast and too far, and were eventually wiped out in 436 by another tribal alliance of fighters called Huns. The Burgundian survivors followed a long, Roman-dictated “trail of tears” and after many years ended up in the region we still call Burgundy today. One of their kings was called Gundaharius by the Romans: he is the man named Gunnar in our story.
The legend of the cursed Rhinegold, of the boy-hero Sigurd, of King Gunnar and his beautiful sister Gudrun, of Attila the Hun and his Valkyrie-sister Brynhild, are contradictory, weird, and seem to take place in a dreamscape which easily includes both Mirkwood forest, the Rhine River and the glaciers of Iceland. It is a legend based on names of places and people (some of whom existed), freely mixed with the old Germanic gods, cunning dwarves, dragons, shape-changers, magical swords and horses, supernatural beings and talking birds; an archaic story which enthralled many generations of Europeans as they listened to the storytellers and minstrels who formed the fabric of their tribal memories. As centuries passed, the Romans went home, Christianity was imposed, new stories were heard, and many old orally-transmitted tales lost their immediacy or were transformed into mere adventures until they were utterly unrecognizable or lost. But in a far corner of Europe, in Iceland, dozens of these stories lived on in the language of the Vikings and – luckily for us – were copied in the 13th century into a small parchment book: a humble, untitled manuscript which is now the greatest single cultural treasure of the Icelanders and is called the Edda. The poems found there, which serve as the basis for our reconstructions, represent the highest art of storytellers and singers, whose tradition stretches into the people's remote pagan past. Their masterful style makes use of ingenious meters, a telegraphic, pithy diction perfect for vocalization, employing gnomic devices and poetic circumlocutions intended more to arouse associative imaging than to deliver information. Despite a marked tendency towards unsentimentality, pragmatism, even grisly humour, these Old Norse stories are full of the uncanny, the dreamlike: the reconstructions we present here bear witness to this. The Edda manuscript includes these tales of envy, gold-lust, revenge and the horrible power they have over that most sacred and holy human institution: the family. These are the archaic stories which we have liberated from the written page, where they were never really at home, and put back into the mouths of storytellers and the hands of minstrels.
We do not limit ourselves to this one terrifying family epic, but frame it with a prophecy taken from the same manuscript. The northern peoples' uncommon respect for worlds beyond their own was manifested in a willingness to heed what was spoken in prophetic and poetic modes. Völuspá is the name of one of the central poems of Old Icelandic tradition, containing the words of an ancient, immortal seeress who speaks in the enigmatic expressions of oracle to a questioning but silent god Odinn; she speaks of time's flux, of the urges for growth and order, and the unconquerable forces of chaos. She tells how the world came about, and she also tells how it will end, stopping several times to ask her questioner: “Do you really want to know more?”.
If this story is at all familiar to us today, it is probably thanks to the 19th-century German Romantics’ fascination with all mediæval stories and legends; already in 1815 we find these Eddic poems translated into German and published by the Brothers Grimm. It is this edition, among other sources, which an ambitious composer named Richard Wagner consulted when working on the libretto for his Ring of the Nibelung music-drama cycle, re-working and re-weaving mediæval sources with his own fertile imagination, in which Brynhild becomes Brünnhilde, Sigurd becomes Siegfried, and the final, apocalyptic battle between giants and gods becomes Götterdämmerung. But Wagner did not “rediscover” these stories any more than we did: 800 years ago an anonymous southern German court poet produced a hugely successful and extravagant verse retelling of the story, the Nibelungenlied; and not long thereafter the famously literary Icelanders themselves were re-acquainted with the whole deadly family affair through the prose Volsunga Saga. Indeed, we must resort to using material from this saga to fill the gaps in the story where the Edda itself is silent.
Concept, musical direction, final text versions, musical reconstructions of the sung texts: Benjamin Bagby.
Instrumental arrangements and accompaniments by Elizabeth Gaver (fiddle) and Norbert Rodenkirchen (flutes), in collaboration with Benjamin Bagby (lyre).
Pronounciation and language consultation (before and during the production): Heimir Palsson (Reykjavik).
Sources: sungs texts from the Codex Regius (Reykjavik, Iceland, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, Gl.kgl.sml.2365 4to.) in the editions of Gustav Neckel / Hans Kuhn (Heidelberg, 1962), with editorial adjustments made by Heimir Palsson based on the facsimile of Codex Regius.
Instruments: 6-string lyres by Rainer Thurau (Wiesbaden, 1997 and 2001)
Thanks to the following people and institutions in Iceland who helped Sequentia to realize this project:
Heimir Pálsson (Reykjavík, Iceland) for his inspiring and patient help with these difficult texts and their pronounciation.
The Stofnun Árna Magnússonar (Reykjavík), in particular to Rosa Thorsteinsdottir, Vesteinn Olason and Gisli Sigurdsson, for generous assistance and use of its historical sound archives during three research visits to Iceland.
The Reconstruction of Eddic Performance
Although we know that mediæval epic poetry was the domain of bards and singers, no written musical sources of the Eddic poems dating from the Middle Ages are known to exist; indeed, we would have no reason to expect such sources to have been written at all. The milieu in which these poems were originally transmitted, sung, and acted out was that of a uniquely oral culture, and professional minstrels passed on repertoires and techniques from generation to generation without the hindrance and expense of writing. As is almost always the case with mediæval song, the use of musical notation is linked to the world of the monkish scriptorium and the noble or ecclesiastical collector, not to the world of the practicing musician. We can assume that the performing traditions of the Edda were probably already in decline by the time the main text manuscript, Codex Regius, was copied in the 13th century. Given this situation, how can we possibly reconstruct sung performances of Eddic poems as they would have been known in pre-Christian Iceland?
The earliest witness which we possess to musical settings from the Edda is an account found in Benjamin de la Borde´s Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne, published in 1780. Among other examples (collected by a musician at the Danish Royal Court, Johann Ernst Hartmann), we find a strophe from the Völuspá set to a simple melody. Unfortunately, we will never know if this melody represents part of an unrelated Icelandic folk tradition of the 17th and 18th centuries, or if it indeed survived in this form from its origins as an oral formula for the vocalization of Eddic poetry.
In searching for paths to the vocalization of these texts, it was obvious to me that more musical information would be needed than this scrap of melodic material from the late 18th century, and I decided to make use of the techniques of "modal language" which Sequentia has developed over the years in work with mediæval song. Briefly, we identify a mode not as a musical scale, but rather as a collection of gestures and signs which can be interiorized, varied, combined and used as a font to create musical "texts" which can be completely new while possessing the authentic integrity of the original material. But like the powerful magic mead which gives the god Odinn the gift of poetry, this "modal mead" is a concoction which is both inspiring and dangerous. We need a strong knowledge of the practice of singing epic poetry as it still exists in various world cultures to show us how such performances must be given a form and a soul, to temper the limitless freedom of modal intoxication.
Having temporarily put aside monsieur de la Borde, where did I turn first for the basic ingredients of this modal brew? Iceland, of course. To give one example: in the sung oral poetry known as rímur - which in itself is a tradition dating from the 15th century, but whose roots may touch much earlier skaldic poetry - I found a vast repertoire of modal material, which clearly could be grouped into several types. During research residencies in Reykjavik in 1995 and again in 2001, I was graciously permitted to work in the tape archives of the Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, where I listened to hundreds of recorded performances of rímur and related song-types, making notes and analyses of the types and uses of modal materials. The result of this process of digestion (which included a weeding-out of obviously later melodic types) was a series of modal vocabularies grouped by structural "signals", which could then be taught to the other singers and applied to the metrics of the Eddic texts as taught to us by the Icelandic philologist Heimir Pálsson. Everything was learned in a process very much resembling oral tradition: we have only worked with our Edda texts and our memories; there were rarely any written musical documents. And in light of this knowledge, the melody found in de la Borde began to make sense. However one chooses to see its transmission, the fact is that this melody demonstrates characteristics which point to the use of a specific modal vocabulary consisting of a few limited elements which are repeated and varied. And so, the attentive listener might hear its "genetic code" echoed in our reconstructions, just as an experienced Icelandic rímur-singer hearing us sing these poems might find at times that some indefinable element makes him feel he actually knows the unknown piece being sung.
In cases where two singers declaim the same text, different versions of the modal gestures may sometimes be heard simultaneously, resulting in a kind of heterophonic texture (verging on improvised polyphony) typical of many traditional musical cultures. The sound of parallel 5ths, still sung in Iceland today in the two-voiced tvísöngur, is also heard. Other aspects of the reconstructive work include a study of Icelandic sources besides rímur, as well as a study of the ancient dance-song melodies of the Faroe Islands and certain Baltic traditional song forms.
Equally important in these musical reconstructions are the instruments which play independent pieces and also accompany the vocalists. In the 12th century, the two most important European instruments for courtly entertainment were certainly the fiddle and the harp, although other types of instruments (for instance, wind and percussion) were certainly known in popular culture. The harp which is used in this performance is copied from remains of instruments found in 7th-century Germanic burial sites. This type of "lyre" would have been known throughout northern Europe well into the 13th century, together with the more recent triangular cithara which we recognize as the most common harp form today. These instruments have very few strings (our harp, for instance, has six gut strings), and the tuning systems, based on mediæval theories of consonance, yield a series of basic intervals which in turn can inform the text being accompanied. The tuning system of the instrument is closely related to the mode which the singer has chosen, so that the instrument must be re-tuned to accompany in a new mode. Regarding playing technique, it hardly needs stating that an instrument of six strings is not suited to playing chords and elaborate melodies. Instead, we have here a harp type (such as is still known in several non-European musical cultures), which has as its means of expression the use of pattern and variation, and on the playing of modal vocabularies. Just as the singers rely on a small repertoire of potent modal gestures for the vocalization of their texts, the harp makes a virtue of its seeming limitations and, like an interlaced Viking design, brings a richness of articulation to the expression of the mode. The fiddle used here is based on one of the earliest depictions of a fiddle in Europe, dating from the 11th century, and was created especially for this production. Techniques of early northern fiddle playing can still be found today hidden within the thriving hardingfele tradition of Norway, and Elizabeth Gaver’s own in-depth researches into the possible mediæval antecedents to this tradition have yielded a convincing style of stringing, tuning and articulation which harmonizes easily with general mediæval ideas about the use of bowed instruments in courtly music. Likewise, the use of flute in this production is based on concepts of tuning and consonance from the early Middle Ages, and one instrument in particular has an almost shamanistic aura, making it ideal for the announcement of the oracular völva: a tiny flute made from a swan’s bone. Fragments of such bone flutes have been found in early Germanic burial sites. In developing the instrumental pieces and accompaniments for this production, the players have made use of the same modal vocabularies and language as the vocalists (we share a common prima materia) but then they have factored in the particular playing and tuning characteristics of their own instruments, so that in the end each piece is unique and can only be played by the musician and instrument which shaped it. There is no “improvisation” as such, but then there are also no written scores aside from a few sketches, and so we prefer to think of ourselves as working within a rather strict oral tradition.
| The Artists |
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Sequentia (www.sequentia.org) is one of the world’s most respected and innovative ensembles for mediæval music. It is an international group of singers and instrumentalists – united in Paris under the direction of Benjamin Bagby – for performances and recordings of Western European music from the period before 1300. The size and disposition of the ensemble is determined by the repertoire being performed, and ranges between an instrumental/vocal duo to a large vocal ensemble. Based on meticulous research, intensive rehearsal and long gestation, Sequentia’s performances seek to confront the listener with a timeless emotional connection to our own past musical cultures.
Founded by Benjamin Bagby and the late Barbara Thornton, Sequentia can look back on more than 30 years of international concert tours, performing throughout Europe, North and South America, India, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Australia. Sequentia has brought to life over seventy innovative concert programmes that encompass the entire spectrum of mediæval music, in addition to the creation of music-theater projects such as Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum, the Cividale Planctus Marie, the Bordesholmer Marienklage, and Heinrich von Meissen’s Frauenleich (several of which were filmed for television). The work of the ensemble is divided between a small touring ensemble of vocal and instrumental soloists, and a larger ensemble of men’s voices for the performance of Latin liturgical chant and polyphony. Sequentia has inspired new generations of young performers, many of whom were trained in professional courses given by Benjamin Bagby and other members of the ensemble. After 25 years based in Cologne, Germany, Sequentia’s home has been in Paris since 2002.
Sequentia’s comprehensive discography of more than thirty recordings spans the entire Middle Ages (including the complete works of Hildegard von Bingen), and the ensemble’s recordings have received numerous prizes, including a Disque d’Or, several Diapasons d’Or, two Edison Prizes, the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis and a Grammy nomination. Recordings made by Sequentia have been integrated into the soundtracks of several major films.
The past years have seen a growing corpus of Sequentia recordings centered on the importance of oral tradition, story-telling, and the earliest musical documents of mediæval Europe: In 2002, Sequentia released an acclaimed 2-CD set of sung tales from mediæval Iceland: The Rheingold Curse: A Germanic Saga of Greed and Vengeance from the Medieval Icelandic Edda, on the independent Marc Aurel Edition label. Other recent programmes, such as Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper (released on the BMG Classics/DHM label in 2004), and Chant Wars, (SONY-BMG / 2005, a co-production with the Parisian ensemble Dialogos, dir. Katarina Livljanic) have received wide international critical acclaim. The most recent recording, Fragments for the End of Time, featuring apocalyptic songs from early mediæval Germany, Saxony and Aquitaine, was released on the Raumklang label in 2008.
Vocalist, harpist and scholar Benjamin Bagby has been an important figure in the field of mediæval musical performance for almost 30 years. After musical studies in the USA (Oberlin Conservatory and Oberlin College) and Switzerland (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis), he and the late Barbara Thornton formed Sequentia in 1977 in Cologne, Germany, where the ensemble was based until Mr. Bagby moved the ensemble to Paris in 2001. The years since 1977 have been almost uniquely devoted to the work of Sequentia. Mr. Bagby was instrumental in the ensemble’s creation of more than 70 innovative concert programmes – and 30 recordings – of mediæval music and music drama.
In addition to the core ensemble, Mr. Bagby also directs the Sequentia men’s vocal ensemble for the performance of mediæval polyphony and chant. The most recent projects for the men’s voices include Chant Wars, a collaboration between Sequentia and the Parisian ensemble Dialogos (dir., Katarina Livljanic), and in 2009 the premiere of a new programme: Voices from the Island Sanctuary: Ecclesiastical Singers in Paris (1190-1230).
Apart from the research and ensemble work of Sequentia, Mr. Bagby devotes his time to the solo performance of Anglo-Saxon and Germanic oral poetry; an acclaimed performance of the Beowulf epic is an ongoing project, with performances given yearly worldwide, and a DVD production released in 2007 (www.BagbyBeowulf.com).
Benjamin Bagby writes extensively on performance practice, and teaches performance courses worldwide. He is currently on the faculty of the Université de Paris Sorbonne - Paris IV, where, together with Katarina Livljanic, he teaches in the master’s programme for mediæval music performance.
Agnethe Christensen, originally from Sweden, studied at the Royal Danish Conservatory and specialized in renaissance and mediæval singing with Andrea von Ramm in Basel and furthermore in Rome and Paris. Well known for her unconventional interpretations of modern and classical works, folk and early vocal music. Agnethe has worked with modern composers Luca Lombardi, Palle Mikkelborg, Wolfgang Rihm, Luciano Berio and John Cage, with opera, folk and film music.
Agnethe Chistensen's expertise is within the field of early music and historically informed folk music and together with ULV where she performs mediæval Nordic ballads and sacred music with singer Lena Susanne Norin and fiddle player Elizabeth Gaver, she presents Swedish traditional music in a historic perspective.
Home in Copenhagen she works together with the mediæval ensemble Alba and together with the Welsh harper Helen Davies with traditional music from Shetland, Orkney and the Hebridees searching the old Norse influence and reconstructing the old poetry of the past. In the project Music of the Mysteries she collaborates with musicians from both the classical and world music scene.
Elizabeth Gaver (mediæval fiddle) began performing with Sequentia in 1992 and was a core member of the ensemble for many years. She has participated in over a dozen recordings with the ensemble, along with several music-drama productions.
She now lives in Oslo, where she has performed and recorded with Modus, Pro Musica Antiqua Oslo, Barokkanerne, and The Norwegian Baroque Orchestra. She is a member of the Swedish trio, Ulv, interpreting traditional ballads and songs with a mediæval perspective. She plays hardingfele with the Norwegian traditional music ensemble Feleboga that has performed concerts and taught dance workshops in Germany, Iceland, Poland, Thailand and the US. In addition, she plays old-time fiddle with the band Apple Blossom.
She has earned degrees from Stanford University, The Juilliard School and the University of Oslo, and studied mediæval performance practice with Thomas Binkley at Indiana University.
For Sequentia’s Edda project, Ms. Gaver commissioned and collaborated on the design of a 4-string fiddle (from a drawing found in an English psalter, ca. 1050) reconstructed by instrument-builder Richard Earle (Basel).
After studying singing in Stockholm, Lena Susanne Norin specialized early music, training with René Jacobs and Dominique Vellard at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland. During these formative years she performed and recorded extensively with the Ferrara ensemble. Following her studies she taught voice at the Schola Cantorum from 1986 to 1990, and has since then continued to teach.
Lena Susanne Norin is much sought after as a concert and oratorio singer around Europe, performing a vast array of music written from 1100 to 1900. During over two decades she has worked and recorded extensively with numerous renowned European ensembles: Ferrara Ensemble, Ensemble Gilles Binchois (mediæval and renaissance chant and chanson), Sequentia (since 1987), La Chapelle Royale, Akantus, Rheinische Kantorei, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Akademie für Alte Musik, Musica Antiqua Köln, Cantus Cölln. International tours have led her to Europe and the USA, Asia and South America.
Lena Susanne also performs Scandinavian traditional music with Ulv, a trio with Agnethe Christensen and Elizabeth Gaver. While she is most eminent in the field of early music, she is by no means a stranger to the romantic repertoire, having sung the part of Erda in the 2002 produktion of Wagner´s Das Rheingold at the Stockholm Folk Opera.
Norbert Rodenkirchen (www.norbertrodenkirchen.de), who studied flute with Hans Martin Mueller and Günther Hoeller at the Staatliche Musikhochschule Köln has been the flute player of Sequentia since 1996 and also works regularly with the French ensemble Dialogos directed by Katarina Livljanic. Together with Sabine Lutzenberger he founded the ensemble per – sonat. With all three ensembles he has been invited to numerous international festivals. He is also much in demand as a composer of music for theater and film as well as a producer for CD projects, most of them in coproduction with the WDR/ West German Radio. Since 2003 Norbert Rodenkirchen is the artistic director of the concert series „Schnuetgen Konzerte – Musik des Mittelalters“ in the mediæval museum of Cologne. Additionally he has given workshops on mediæval instrumental improvisation at the Mozarteum Salzburg, at the festivals of Vancouver and Ambronay as well as at the conservatories of Lyon and Liege. In 2009 he released his second solo CD Flour de Flours / Guillaume de Machaut / Lais & Virelais on the Marc Aurel Edition label.