Good link below. I have an interest in reconstructing the authentic
norse poetic and musical performance of pre-christian times. I also
like and listen to rimur, nordic folk music (even play some of it).
I have followed the Sequentia reconstruction, but am not all that
satisfied with the results, as the group seems too 'operatic' and
studied to my ears. Rimur, although post-christian by many centuries
and therefore less authentically norse, are more interesting to me,
as they seem to preserve something more similar to what I imagine
authentic norse performance to have been like. I imagine that the
average 'singer' was untrained in the modern sense (not Sequentia),
that he was rural (not surprising), learned his art from the older
local singers, and used a tonality different from that represented
by the modern 'well- or even-tempered' 12 tone scale. All of this,
of course, is true about rimur (also about nordic folk-music on the
whole). Furthermore, I imagine that such a rural 'singer' of old
would have had some musical accompaniment (see other oral cultures
on this point), but that this would have been typically sparse and
performed by a musician/musical specialist (probably one, but maybe
more in a higher class, court-setting) who was trained to accompany
such performance. Also, I imagine that such performances, typically
in a rural setting, would have included some prose-links/story-
telling between sung/chanted/intoned verse-sections, as well as some
solo musical pieces (slættir), whose rules and tradition would be as
complex as that of the poetry (compare the surviving traditions with
their ornately nordic, poly-tonal, highly structured, virtuosity -
solo fire, but accompaniment-style in performance with poetry). Now,
we can easily reduce that the times/rythmic-types used were the same
as those lying behind pre-christian, traditional germanic verse, for
example fornyrdislag or ljodahattr. This tells us something about
the time, which would have been hammered out by a steady foot, just
as in surviving nordic traditional music. The grey area, of course,
is tonality. What scales/tones were really used by authentic norse
singers of old? We can figure that tonality was regional and learned
from older, local performers (shown by all surviving nordic musical
traditions, including rimur), and that singers (and musicians) had a
personal style, highly influenced by their masters, but identifiably
their own on some telling points. Now, the tonality of any randomly
selected, modern performance could just as easily be taken from
church-music as from pre-christian music. Indeed, there is reason to
believe that many, perhaps most, of the scales found are foreign in
origin, and thus not truely representative of authentic norse music
or poetry (a fair amount of ink has been spilled on this topic). The
problem is that we do not possess any stringed instruments (fiddles,
langspil, harps, etc.) or bored ones (bone-flutes, willow-flutes,
etc.) where the tuning/tonality is a)preserved intact and b)deemed
to represent typical tonality at the time. Folk were raised with a
certain tonal-background, much as they were with a cultural one in
general. They 'heard' music a certain way and could, not doubt, deem
any music native or foreign by ear. Now, I have done some research
on musical intruments of the time (as have many others more learned
than I on this topic) and have discovered the following, which I do
think is Odin's golden-key, so to say, for us modern folk (the quiet
revenge of the aged-one against the killers of germanic music): the
mouth-harp. This simple, portable instrument is found everywhere in
Germanic soil, as it was discarded when the tongue broke and a new
one obtained. It was cheap, easily made by any smith wanting to make
a little extra money. In my research, I have read about, visited and
seen iron- and viking-age mouth harps. Now, this intrument is Odin's
golden for the following two reasons: 1) it was actually played by
actual norse persons in norse times (with no other musical, cultural
or religious back-ground than a norse one, as far as we can tell)
and 2) unlike other intruments (surviving or not) thought to really
have existed at the time in norse culture, the mouth-harp cannot be
tuned - it has only one tonality. Play the mouth-harp in the museum
and it will still sound exactly like it did when it was made, given
only that its tongue is intact. No tongue? Make a copy and it will
still sound identical. This gives us a tonality (with a tonic note,
a primary scale and microtonal series), which singers must likewise
have used while being accompanied by this instrument. How popular or
truely representative was this instrument? Archeaology tells us that
it was very typical. Consider also the affordability and portability
issues: 1) most folk were poor and good instruments expensive 2) the
mouth-harp is portable - just but it in your pocket and set sail. It
is logical to assume that ancients loved music as much as we do, and
that aspiring musicians took their instruments everywhere, just as
many moderns still do (despite recording-technology, music-players
and less demand for actual live performance). One imagines that, in
ancient times, a man heard no music unless 1)he sand or played 2)he
had contact with someone who sang or played. A great environment to
sell cheap, easily made instruments in, indeed. As there is no real
doubt that old singers would have been accompanied by a mouth-harp,
often if not exclusively, and that some/most of them would likewise
have played it themselves (though not while singing, obviously), can
be not assume that the harp's tonality also occured in singing? This
would seem a natural enough conclusion. Now, I certainly do wonder
why Sequentia, for example, did no use this instrument, and why the
other viking-age musical reconstructions that I have heard do not
use it either. Perhaps the instrument is considered too primitive or
not glamorous enough for moderns with romantic ideas about the noble
ancient germanics' musical tradition. Wagner or not, one singer and
one jawharp player would be, I think, typical enough of an ancient
performance. Thoughts welcome.

Regards,
Konrad

--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell@...> wrote:
>
> THE LINK: I just came across this book online: "Kvæðaskapur:
Icelandic Epic Song", by Hreinn Steingrímsson. It looks interesting
although there's a lot that's too technical for me to understand.
It discusses the possibility that the traditional Icelandic
singing/chanting style might go back to very early times, and that
Old English poetry could have been performed in a similar way.
Unfortunately some of the special Icelandic characters don't show
up, so watch out for missing 'ð', etc.

> http://music.calarts.edu/KVAEDASKAPUR/
>
>
> THE CORRECTION: For some reason I absentmindedly added 'ik' in that
first line of the would-be Gothic verse in my reply to Konrad, which
should have read: 'Brikan skal airis, broþar,' (an attempted
translation of ON 'bresta mun fyrr, bróðir').

Noted. Nice ;)