Eep!

[scaharp]

I'm one of a number of performers who will be reciting the entirety of Beowulf at Beowulf: the Event.  www.eastkingdom.org/EventDetails.html

The tentative program/plot summary for it is now posted.  The list of performers is looking really impressive.  And I'm feeling totally intimidated.  I mean totally.

I haven't quite memorized all of my

Comments

[dulcinbradbury]

God we are ALL doing this.

Really and truly ALL of us. I'll probably write up my Beowulf angst later.

[hotspurre]

I'm having a devil of a time getting mine memorized. I've been close for two days now, but still can't practice it without the paper. I should be able to do that by now.

I think the length of it (about 7 minutes,) and the fact that the lines aren't end-stopped are the reasons. Because each line is less of a unit, the alliteration linkages don't help me memorize as much as they do with Old Norse.

[la_peregrina]

Have a wonderful time, all! Would I could be three places at once. *sigh*

[shalmestere]

Good luck! hudebnik and I are looking forward to being audience members :-)

[telerib]

From what I recall, Bagby uses a pentatonic tuning; don't know if major or minor. He actually improvises the score as he goes, although certain themes are more or less fixed after long practice. The pentatonic tuning is not the historically attested one we have for the lyre, either.

I did an experiment a bit back with harp and recitation... wow, a bit back, indeed. Here's the post. That's just good old open fifths, home and away, with absolutely no attempt made to align the words and the music. They were recorded as separate tracks and then combined. It's not bad!

If it were me, I'd do home and away open fifths in Dorian to underlay the recitation (and don't worry about when to switch, just do it every so often!), with some runs or brief improvisational themes in between sections - when you pause for a breath or a break, or switch narrative gears. I've found that reciting from memory, especially a piece that I've only juuuust memorized, takes way too many cycles to do anything much more complex than that.

Wish I could be