Programs

Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper

I. An Ode to Cosmic Harmony

In the neo-Platonic cosmos of many medieval thinkers (and certainly our harper belonged to this group), the visible world could provide tangible expression of the underlying order and harmony of the universe, whose elements vibrate in agreeable concord with their neighbors, symbolizing the unseen forces which keep our world intact.

Quod mundus stabili fide

Rhineland, early 11c)

This is one of the songs (metra) from the famous "Consolation of Philosophy", written by the Roman aristocrat, philosopher and learned musician, Boethius, as he sat in prison in ca. 524, awaiting execution on trumped-up charges of treason. The ‘Consolation’, arguably one of the most widely-read and important Western books of all time, is in the form of a long dialogue between the despairing Boethius and a numinous female personification of ‘Philosophia’ who visits him on death row. Their exchanges are interspersed with songs in verse, many of which have been found set to music in monastic manuscripts dated centuries later. Our harper’s songbook contains incipits to all of Boethius’s metra, attesting to their continued popularity in Germany, more than four centuries after Boethius was executed. In this song (from Book II / vii), the poet is reminded that our chaotic world is actually well-ordered, and that the source of this order is love.

Text: In regular harmony the world moves through its transformations; seeds in competition with each other are held in balance by eternal law;

[Refrain]: O happy race of men: if the love that rules the stars may also rule your hearts!

Phoebus brings rosy dawns in his golden chariot, that his sister Phoebe might rule the nights brought by Hesperus, [Refr.];

the waves of the greedy sea are kept within fixed bounds, nor may the land move out and extend its limits, [Refr.];

That which binds all things to order, governing earth, sea and sky, is love, [Refr.];

If love’s rein slackened, all things now held by mutual love would immediately fall to warring with each other, striving to wreck that engine of the world which they now drive, in mutual trust, with motion beautiful, [Refr.].

And love joins peoples too, by a sacred bond, and ties the knot of holy matrimony that binds lovers, and joins also with its law all faithful friends, [Refr.].

(Translation: S.J. Tester)

Program Archive

Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper

Upcoming Concerts

19 June 2010
Montalbâne Festival, Germany
Fragments for the End of Time

24 September 2010
Cité de la Musique, Paris
The Rheingold Curse

See full concert schedule

News

Early Music America Annual Award

Early Music America, the national service organization for the field of early music, has announced the winners of its 2010 awards recognizing outstanding accomplishments in early music. Benjamin Bagby will receive the Howard Mayer Brown Award for lifetime achievement in the field of early music. The awards will be presented at the EMA Annual Meeting and Awards Ceremony at the Berkeley Early Music Festival on 11 June 2010.

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In September 2009 a new film about the life of Hildegard von Bingen, directed by Margarethe von Trotta and starring Barbara Sukowa, was released in Germany. More

Interview with Benjamin Bagby

WNYC, New York Public Radio, aired an interview with the ‘Beowulf’ performer, B. Bagby. Listen to the show

Beowulf on DVD

Benjamin Bagby’s legendary performance of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf (part I) recorded live in Helsingborg, Sweden.
Visit the Beowulf website