Thaet waes god scop!

[janewilliams20]

I have just been to see Benjamin Bagby performing Beowulf at the British Library. A guy dressed in black, sitting on a stool with a six-string harp, reciting a poem in a language that hardly any of the audience knew a word of, for an hour and a half. OK, there were "surtitles", but they were an abbreviated form of the translation. No scenery, nothing. Bound to be boring, right?

He held us spell-bound. We were engrossed by the characterisation, we laughed at the jokes, we regretted that we only got to hear a third of the story (Grendel is dead, and we're celebrating that, not knowing that's he'd told on us to his mum). Now that's a storyteller!

I went in knowing perhaps three words of Old English. My vocabulary at least doubled as we went along, hence my ability to give this post a suitable title.

I refrained from buying yet another Beowulf translation as I left, but I did buy the DVD of the performance. I've seen the 3D film version, and expect to prefer this: the pictures are better :)

There are two more performances, Monday and Wednesday evening. They're not yet sold out (today was). If you're in the wrong country for that, here's his web-site,
where you can at least purchase the DVD, and maybe find when he'll be in your area.
More importantly for me, it has a copy of the research documentation for the tuning and use of that harp - and since I have a half-built version that I was wondering how to tune.... add another project to the list of things I want to finish!

Comments

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

That sounds amazing, I'm very envious, I've seen clips of Bagby playing and reciting before and was most impressed, handy having the notes on tuning. Makes me wonder how many people have half built versions lying around, here's the progress we made on an anglo-saxon lyre a few years ago, never finished it though...

[maeve-the-red.livejournal.com]

That sounds great. Stuff like that (almost) makes me wish I lived or worked in London.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

I don't live or work in London, but it's close enough to get to for a Sunday afternoon. I couldn't manage the evening performances without some time off work, though, they start too early.