Description
An Old English riddle from the Exeter Book and stanza XI from the Old English ‘Rune Poem’, released on Stef’s album Riddle Songs (Delphian Records, 2020). Ice is a ‘mini-epic’ (Music Web International, 2020) narrating the destructive power and primordial magnificence of the mighty iceberg, which weaves together imagined ancient bardic storytelling (in the tradition of Stef’s mentor and colleague, Ben Bagby) with folk-like incantations, rich chromatic harmony, and multi-layered timbral tapestries. Technically demanding, rhythmically complex, and harmonically dense, this piece is suitable for professional and very advanced student solo voice ensembles.
“. . . the more extended numbers in Riddle Songs are perfectly formed arcs of imaginatively conceived choral sound, thrillingly executed by the fourteen members of the ad hoc choir Everlasting Voices. . . The texts of the three biggest panels – Fire (track 2), the melismatic Flight (track 14 – a dyad of bird poems) and the remarkable mini-epic Ice (track 19), with its ethereal tintinnabuli and barnstorming tenor solo (Nils Greenhow) – are drawn from the Exeter Book, the most voluminous of the surviving codices of Anglo-Saxon poetry. Each of these longer pieces simultaneously project austerity and complexity and somehow seem to connect us to an impossibly distant past. Conner has thus fashioned an unusual music whose modernity is far from inaccessible. . . Riddle Songs is a delight. It’s as novel and refreshing as the texts are ancient and enchanting.” – Richard Hanlon, Music Web International (read the full review)
The Crucial Info
Forces: SSSSAAATTTBBB solo voice ensemble
Duration: c. 9′
Texts: Old English riddle from the Exeter Book (Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501); stanza XI from the Rune Poem (London, British Library MS Cotton Ortho B.x)
Date of composition: 2014 (originally titled Īs); revised 2019
Premiere: Shanghai Oriental Arts Centre, The 24 (cond. Zhu Buxi)
Recording: Riddle Songs. Stef Conner; Hanna Marti; Everlasting Voices. 2020. Edinburgh, UK: Delphian
Listen
Perusal Score
Texts
1. Stanza XI, from the Rune Poem (London, British Library MS Cotton Ortho B.x)
| (īs) byþ oferceald, unġemetum slidor; glisnaþ glæshlūttur ġimmum ġelīcust; flōr forste ġeworuht, fæġer ansȳne. |
I is for Is, ice clear as glass, The slippery cold that escapes the clutch, The morning gem that melts at noon, The floor of frost, the glittering ground. |
2. Riddle 33 (Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501)
| Wiht cwōm æfter weġe wrǣtlico līþan;
cȳmliċ from ċēole cleopode to londe, hlīnsade hlūde– hleahtor wæs gryreliċ, eġesful on earde. Ecge wǣron scearpe; wæs hīo hetegrim, hilde tō sǣne, biter beadoweorca. Bordweallas grōf heardhīþende. Heterūne bond! Sæġde searocræftiġ ymb hyre sylfre ġesceaft: “Is mīn mōdor mǣgða cynnes þæs dēorestan þæt is dohtor mīn ēacen uploden swa þæt is ǣldum cūþ fīrum on folce þæt sēo on foldan sceal on ealra londa ġehwām lissum stōndan.” |
An awesome beauty angled the wave; The deep-throated creature called to land, laughed loud-lingering, struck terror Home to men. Her blades honed sharp, She was slow to battle but battle-grim, Savage wound-worker. The slaughterer Struck ship-walls, carried a curse. The cunning creature said of herself:“My mother, who comes from the kind of women Dearest and best, is my daughter grown Great and pregnant; so is it known to men On earth that she shall come and stand Gracefully on the ground in every land.” |
Old English texts edited by Stef Conner.
Translations reproduced from: Craig Williamson (2017), The Complete Old English Poems, reprinted by kind permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Please contact Stef for more information and/or a license to perform this piece.