Benjamin Bagby, co-founder and director of the award-winning international ensemble Sequentia, presents "Finding the Lost Voice of Early Medieval Song." Co-sponsored by the School of Music, University Libraries, the American Musicological Society, and Early Music in Columbus.
This lecture is free and open to the public; no ticket required.
As a performer, Benjamin Bagby is interested in the intersection between the voice (uttering words formed into a metrically structured text) and the function of the harp, an instrument which contributes modal structure, a multitude of subtle rhythmic impulses, and various possibilities for commentary and accompaniment. If the instrument itself is to play an essential role in the performance — which Bagby believes it sometimes should — then the performer must consider the ways in which six strings, five-plus fingers, and one voice can interact to tell a story. The beginning of this process will be the tuning of the instrument itself: how can we make informed hypotheses about the ways in which such an instrument might be tuned? What should our decisions be based upon? What medieval sources can we consult? Bagby proposes to examine several of the harp tunings which he currently uses, to see what makes them similar or different, and how this impacts performance.
Benjamin Bagby is the co-founder and director of the award-winning international ensemble Sequentia, which has been performing and recording early medieval repertoire since 1977. Educated at Oberlin College and Conservatory and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland, Bagby is a vocalist, medieval harpist and scholar, serving most recently on the faculty of the Sorbonne in Paris. As a soloist, he is known particularly for his imaginative reconstructions of epic poems and stories originally performed by medieval bards. Only the texts were notated, leaving Bagby to use clues such as contemporaneous modality to imagine the music. He and medieval flutist Norbert Rodenkirchen are in town to perform “The Wanderer: Songs of Travel from the Early Middle Ages” on the Early Music in Columbus concert series.
Lectures in Music Studies is co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries.
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