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| Benjamin Bagby performing Beowulf, photo Peter Hislop |
Reviewed by Alanna Maclean
“Beowulf.” Realised and performed by Benjamin Bagby.
Canberra International Music Festival, Concert 20. The Fitters’ Workshop. May 5
at 8pm.
WHAT a fascinating
performance this turned out to be. Especially for those of us who many years
ago chose to do early English (probably because we had read Tolkien) and
therefore were compelled to translate the first one thousand lines of the
Anglo- Saxon epic poem.
Benjamin Bagby’s performance, informed by much wide research
into early music, comes right to the point. No attempt at historic costume,
just a variation on ‘musician’s blacks’.
A harp, also informed by research. Breaks like those between movements
for retuning and water. And above all, in the suitably vaulted space of The
Fitters’ Workshop, surtitles in modern English.
No modern film has ever properly captured the sense of this
poem. The story of Beowulf, his arrival on the shore of Denmark, his
introduction to the beleaguered hall of King Hrothgar and his battle with the
monster Grendel is part of a very stark and masculine piece.
Bagby knows how to let the poem, with its rolling language
full of sounds that have long since vanished from modern English, have its own
voice.
Speaking and singing are tangled together. The style of
performance matches the style of the poem, robust and subtle by turns. Bagby’s voice
filled the hall without any assistance.
Grand stuff. History. Legend. Afterwards one might reflect
on the limits of its world view and the nature of a story that relegates women
to cup bearers (and later in the poem, to a monstrous mother with no name).
But on Saturday night in that long high space of The
Fitters’ Workshop for over an hour and a half Benjamin Bagby’s performance let
another space and time through the doors.
