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Welcome to the ‘Spoils of the Hunt’ blog

4th September 2024: This was a beer-themed Song Hunt, to celebrate the autumn harvest. After a brief foray into Sumerian drinking songs, we took a deep dive into the much-loved traditional song, John Barleycorn, in which barley is personified as a man, and the beer-making process depicted as a story of cruel tortures visited upon him. The hunt uncovered lots of juicy questions – ‘What’s with the harvest human sacrifice?’ ‘When did we start personifying booze?’ ‘Where did the character of John Barleycorn come from?’ – but, very few reliable answers… as usual! 😂

Session videos

Part 1: historical background and tenuous ancient parallels!

Part 2: some (very!) different transmissions of John Barleycorn

Musical Score

If you’d like to try singing my three-part harmony arrangement of this song, you can find it in my online shop, including an option to order a free perusal score.

Links to some resources mentioned in the Hunt…

Excellent John Barleycorn recordings

(There are millions, so this is a bit of an arbitrary selection… but I love them!)

If you enjoyed this Imaginary Song Hunt, please drop some pennies into the tip jar… And feel free to use the ‘comments’ box below to share feedback or fun facts!

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This blog is where I share the spoils from each Imaginary Song Hunt. Feel free to use the ‘comments’ box to share feedback or fun facts! If you enjoyed the session, please drop some pennies into the tip jar…

17th July 2024:

In the second of my July ‘new album specials’, we hunted down the song known as Maid Freed from the Gallows, or The Prickly Bush, which tells the story of a young woman abandoned to the gallows by her family, and ultimately saved by her lover. We looked at some old transcriptions, from England and the Appalachians, as well as mid-20th-century American source recordings, and delved into the weird cante-fable (part-sung story) ‘The Golden Ball’, which seems to be an origin of the song, complete with bogles under the bed, giants being chopped in half, and an impatient Yorkshire hangman!

Slides from the session

Video

Recommended recorded versions

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This blog is where I share resources from each Imaginary Song Hunt session, along with a Zoom video for anyone who wants to catch up. Feel free to use the ‘comments’ box below to share feedback, fun facts, or just to say hello! If you enjoyed the session and these resources, please: drop some pennies into the tip jar

19th June 2024:

The Silver Dagger

In the first of my July ‘new album specials’, I took at look at some of the historical sources for a favourite folksong of mine, The Silver Dagger, thinking about how historical research broaden the scope of our ways of interpreting and reimagining traditional songs today. We looked at some First-World-War-era Appalachian transcriptions of this song, and traced its variants back to 19th Broadside Ballads. We sang a version transcribed by Cecil Sharp in 1907, in Somerset.

Slides from the session

Video

Recommended recordings

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This blog is where I share resources from each Imaginary Song Hunt session, along with a Zoom video for anyone who wants to catch up. Feel free to use the ‘comments’ box below to share feedback, fun facts, or just to say hello! If you enjoyed the session and these resources, feel free to: drop some pennies into the tip jar

19th June 2024:

A Song for Saint Æthelthryth

A special session for anyone planning a pilgrimage to Ely, to venerate our local saint, Æthelthryth (c.636 CE – 679 CE), on her feast day (23rd June). The crowds queuing up to sing this song for Æthelthryth will probably give the ones at the Euros a run for their money! 😂 In this Song Hunt, we took a look at the hymn to Saint Æthelthryth composed by the Venerable Bede (in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People), explored the process of finding suitable medieval melodies for songs for which no words survived, and experimented with some medieval-style harmony.

Slides from the session

Video

If you’d like a copy of this song, drop me a line! The score’s not very tidy just now, but I’d happily polish it up for an outing. Why not sing it to celebrate Æthelthryth’s feast in 2025? 😁

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Welcome to the ‘Spoils of the Hunt’ blog

24th April 2024: With the medieval ‘interval song’ Diapente et diatessaron (‘the fifth and the fourth’) as inspiration, this session looked at manuscripts that give us clues about how medieval music-makers learnt (and understood) their craft. If you’re wondering what an ‘interval song’ is, then look no further than this brilliant one, by Django Bates – it’s a song that helps music learners get used to identifying the different leaps and steps between tones.

 

Catch-up video

Enjoy this video of the Zoom session, but scroll down to watch the video performance at the end (feat. Hanna Marti) with better quality audio…

An interpretation of the song, as notated in the Graduale Nivernensis

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Stef Conner (@stefconnersong)

A two-part harmony arrangement

Here’s the two-part arrangement with Hanna Marti (gorgeous video filmed and edited by Mark Harmer), which appears at the end of the Song Hunt. The Zoom audio from the catch-up video is a bit dodgy, so watch this for a better sound.

Further listening

An album of music from the ‘Cambridge Songs’ manuscript:

  1. Sequentia: Boethius, Songs of Consolation; part of Sam Barrett’s Restoring Lost Songs project

Support the Song Hunt

If you enjoyed this Imaginary Song Hunt, please drop some pennies into the tip jar… And feel free to use the ‘comments’ box below to share feedback or fun facts!

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This blog is where I share resources for each Imaginary Song Hunt session, along with a catch-up Zoom video. Feel free to use the ‘comments’ box below to share feedback, fun facts, or just say hello!

If you enjoyed the session and these resources, feel free to: drop some pennies into the tip jar

10th April 2024:

In this session we tackled Sainte marie, the last in my series of sessions on the three (or arguable FOUR) songs by Saint Godric of Finchale. The notation for this song (or two) survives in three manuscripts, but is complete in only one of them, and the substantial stylistic differences between the two sections begs the question: is it one song? And, if so, is it all created by the same person?!

Slides from the session

Catch-up video

My arrangement of the song…

Watch a draft on Vimeo, in advance of its online release.

Drop me a line (stef@stefconner.com) if you’d like a copy of the score.

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This blog is where I share resources from each Imaginary Song Hunt session, along with a Zoom video for anyone who wants to catch up. Use the ‘comments’ box below to share feedback, fun facts, or just  say hello!

And, if you enjoyed the session and these resources, feel free to: drop some pennies into the tip jar

27th March 2024:

Old English charm to make the fields fertile

In this session we tackled the Old English ritual known as Æcerbot (‘Field Remedy’), which was supposed to heal fields that were barren, perhaps as a result of witchcraft! We looked at one of the Old English metrical charms contained in the ritual, and experimented with different ways of whispering, reciting, and chanting it. The session includes an interview with Debby Banham on this fabulous text.

Slides from the session

Video

Full session, for anyone who’d like to catch up:

Further listening and reading

From the Song Hunters…

Teresa made a link between the recitation of incantations and the amazing Sami ‘yoik’/’joik’ singing tradition, sharing this album: Folk Voices – Finnish Folk Song Through the Ages (Ondine, 1999). On the content, she notes:

  • at 2:15 (track 1) call & response chant
  • 3:40 (track 2) I think this is a yoik about stalking elk
  • 11:32 (track 5) herding calls for cows
  • 14:08 (track 6) Tulen synty -loitsu (a spell for starting/birthing a fire) parts are sotto voce, and others could probably be heard across the whole landscape!

And here’s a link to the pertinent Wikipedia article.

Thanks Teresa!

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This blog is where I share resources from each Imaginary Song Hunt session, along with a Zoom video for anyone who wants to catch up. Feel free to use the ‘comments’ box below to share feedback, fun facts, or just to say hello!

If you enjoyed the session and these resources, feel free to: drop some pennies into the tip jar

17th January 2024:

January Folksong for Wronged Women

This session explored the Irish folksong ‘In the Month of January’ (also known as ‘The Fatal Snowstorm’ and ‘The Cruel Father’), which tells the story of a young woman who is seduced and made pregnant, then abandoned by (presumably much wealthier) young man, and is tragically cast out by her family as a result – not an uncommon theme in traditional song!

Slides from the session

I’ll embed the slideshow from every Hunt here, with some extra clickable links.

Video

Full session, for anyone who’d like to catch up:

New performance video (currently unlisted; to be released online 24 Jan):

Scores

You’re welcome to use this score for your own performances, but please just credit me if you do so (and let me know, in case I can come and listen 🙂). I am always grateful for feedback on my scores!

In the Month of January – 2024

Further listening

Nice recordings of the song by currently active singers (click to open Spotify tracks):

Recordings by so-called ‘source’ singers:

From the Song Hunters…

You might remember Stella Richardson giving some nice listening suggestions at the end of the session. She pointed out some parallels with the song ‘Henry the Poacher’, which she and Tony had heard sung by The Young Tradition. There are some melodic similarities, as well as a few lyrical formulas that pop up in both songs, but this one is a tragedy from the perspective of a young man, transported for poaching. It’s a subject close to my heart, since my mum’s amazing family tree research revealed that this was the fate of lots of my ancestors! We haven’t found that particular recording online, but here’s another nice one (sourced by Tony):

And by another ‘source’ singer, Harry Cox, whose singing has been a big influence on me (I’ve made arrangements of his songs for my choir).

Any other folky parallels spring to mind? Floating verses? Similar stories? Please do share in the comments if so…

By |

This blog is where I share resources from each Imaginary Song Hunt session, along with an edited Zoom video for anyone who wants to catch up. Feel free to use the ‘comments’ box below to share feedback, fun facts, or just to say hello!

🪙🏺 If you enjoyed the session and these resources, feel free to: dicere gratiam donare pecuniam 🏺🪙

Preview event, 6th December 2023:

Ancient Harmonies for Saint Nicholas

In this special preview event, we dipped into a few pieces of music from different periods, to get a flavour of the kinds of things the song hunt will explore when it starts in the New Year. We looked at the earliest known Christian song, the Oxyrhynchus Hymn, skimmed over medieval chant for Saint Nicholas, and learned St Godric of Finchale’s song for Saint Nicholas, one of the three oldest songs in English for which notation has survived. We also looked at medieval techniques for making two-part harmonies.

Slides from the session

I’ll embed the slideshow from every Hunt here, with some extra clickable links. For image information, click any of the pictures to visit the online source.

Video

Full session, for anyone who’d like to catch up:

New performance video (due to go online in a couple of weeks):

Scores

You’re welcome to use this score for your own performances, but please just credit me if you do so (and let me know, in case I can come and listen 🙂).

Sainte Nicholaes, 2- or 3-part arrangement

Further listening

The Saint Nicholas Centre has a comprehensive discography and resource list for medieval music devoted to Saint Nicholas, so rather than try to make my own, I’ll simply direct you to this link: medieval music and plays for Saint Nicholas.

But here’s a particularly fabulous recording of Godric’s songs, by Sequentia, using the kinds of organum techniques we discussed in the session:

From the Song Hunters…

Mille gratias to Helen Wellen for the dorkiest meme in the whole history of the internet:

 

 

St. Nicholas vs. the Heretic | The New Authors Fellowship