Riddle Songs

We know from poems such as Beowulf, which mentions warriors singing praise songs, and Caedmon's ‘Hymn’, a divine inspired song, that music was central to Anglo-Saxon culture. But, despite clues – metrical, alliterative – we cannot know precisely how the music of the mead-hall sounded. This enigma intrigues singer and composer Stef Conner. She has a deep knowledge of the riddles in The Exeter Book and of the Venerable Bede and the music manuscript of St Godric of Finchale. Connor really can read the runes.

Riddle Songs is an album of texts from these, which Connor has set as solos for herself with strummed lyre, duets with early music singer and harpist Hannah Martil and choral arrangements for the ensemble Everlasting Voices, conducted by Jonathan Brigg. While she draws on folk song and medieval music she is not bound by these, bringing her own spirit as a composer to create music that pivots between the familiar though ancient and the modern but unknown. There is, then, a riddling aspect to her composition as well the texts. But the people who created these Old English texts lived in charged times. They were violent – they really did go berserk – they were visionary, ecstatic, and rude. Connor is daring, but not enough; to capture this world musically she needs herself to go a bit wild.