Programs

Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper

Introduction

What did secular European song sound like one thousand years ago? Who were its singers and what instruments did they play? Where, and under what circumstances, have their songs survived? Can we ever hope to reconstruct music from such a distant age? These are the questions which led to my initial search for the lost songs of a performing musician whose name remains unknown to us, a search which now culminates - or at least pauses for reflection - in this program: Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper.

Almost one thousand years ago a collection Latin and German song was copied into a manuscript by Anglo-Saxon monks in the Abbey of St. Augustine in Canterbury. The original source - or sources - has long since disappeared, but the manuscript copy has survived to this day, and is now found in the library of Cambridge University. Although we will never know what its exact origin was, one thing is clear: many of the songs copied by the monks come from the milieu of learned, aristocratic churchmen in the Rhineland, where cities such as Cologne, Mainz, Worms and Speyer were centers of culture and power in Germany at the turn of the first millennium. In addition, it is striking that many of the song texts from this collection display an intimate working knowledge of music, the voice, and instruments, especially the harp (cithara, lira) and even the flute (tibia). When considering possible sources of the Canterbury collection, the evidence points strongly to the performance repertoire of a learned "citharista", a bi-lingual harper/singer from the Rhineland, whose songs delighted not only aristocratic bishops and their courts, but also powerful abbots, secular nobility (inlcuding the Kaiser’s court), and the young clerical intelligentsia of those bustling river towns with their imposing cathedrals. Here we have the songs of a professional entertainer whose audience was expected to pay for his services (and he might easily have been joined on occasion by another minstrel from the ranks of the itinerant players, or even a poetically-inclined clerical cantor). Our program combines some of the earliest-known musical manuscripts of European song with reconstructions from the Canterbury manuscript, to give a glimpse into the deliciously subtle, long-lost world of an unknown Rhineland harper and his sophisticated audience.

Program Archive

Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper

Upcoming Concerts

28 October 2011
Early Music In Columbus, USA
Chant Wars

13, 14, 15 January 2012
Musée National du Moyen Âge, Paris, France
Frankish Phantoms

25, 26 February 2012
Da Camera of Houston, USA
Fragments for the End of Time

See full concert schedule

News

Between Music and Story-telling

In the context of a performance by Sequentia of The Rheingold Curse at the Radovljica Early Music Festival (Slovenia) in August, 2011, Benjamin Bagby spoke with Katarina Šter. Read the English original version of the interview here

Bagby and Rodenkirchen on WDR3

In June, 2011, Benjamin Bagby and Norbert Rodenkirchen were interviewed by journalist Anna Austrup for a Sequentia 'Portrait' broadcast in the West German Radio's prestigious 3rd program, in conjunction with a live broadcast concert in Cologne's 'Romanesque Summer' concerts series.
Listen to the recorded interview (in German)

2011 Thornton Scholarship

Laura Osterlund is the recipient of the 2011 Barbara Thornton Memorial Scholarship.
Read more

Benjamin Bagby on WQXR

On January 23, 2011, Bagby joined host David Garland at New York's classical music station, WQXR, to share his insights on the challenges and pleasures of bringing medieval music to life, and to present recordings by Sequentia.
Listen to the recorded interview

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