A&S Salon at Rose Rises

Rose Rises is a new event hosted by the Canton of Coille Stoirmeil. It took place at a new (for the SCA) venue, Aquarian Gardens near New Lisbon, Wisconsin.  I was asked to do something with A&S, so I hauled a mess of books of all kinds and held a salon, where people could do research, work on projects, or just hang out. We even had a couple bardic circles.

Once more into the garden

Cross & Compass was a Northshield event held in Calontir this weekend. (Those familiar with the heraldry of both kingdoms will realize what a clever event title that is.)  I had not yet invoked the aid of Calontiri in organizing my herbal, so I shared my struggle with them. At first only one gentle came to my aid, but eventually six good gentles were in attendance. I still am uncertain about the best organization.  Worse, I added some new herbs to the mix, making the struggle even more difficult (but more interesting).

Surprise!

Sometimes a class is completely unplanned. We offered tours of WW (our "big event") and a lady in my tour group asked about medieval medicine. I couldn't take the time to talk with her in depth, or I'd lose the rest of the group, but I asked her to email me with her request. This she did, and from the comfort of my own library I was able to recommend several books for her.

WW Meet & Greet

Northshielders were invited to gather to meet each other in person at our "Big Event", Warriors & Warlord, held the weekend of July 13 in Boscobel, Wisconsin. About a dozen of us gathered, introduced ourselves, and chatted about our projects. Several folks from one shire though about beginning a shire-wide challenge. Others shared countless A&S activities they were pursuing. It was a high-energy gathering - full of geekiness.

Duly Noted

In his Etymologies, St Isidore said,  “Unless sounds are remembered by man, they perish, for they cannot be written down.”  He was right in his time, but it didn't take long for people to find a new way to write music. 
"Duly Noted" was an attempt to trace the uneven history of notating music in manuscripts, first with neumes, then with neumes on a staff, to square or diamond-shaped notes on a staff of four to seven lines. There were other methods used in handbooks that didn't quite make it to prime-time. Some of the manuscripts were smaller than a paperback, others were well over two feet tall. 
The best thing I found was the Exultet Roll, which was nothing less than 11th century PowerPoint!  Since this was an event that combined the Stellar University of Northshield with a Scribes and Heralds Symposium, I included lots of manuscripts with heraldry. I also recycled "Now I know my ABGs" -- a history of the alphabet.

A Class out of Whole Cloth

Sometimes a class is altogether too easy.  Since the Shire is planning a trip to a fabric store, I brought a variety of different fabrics to our regular A&S Night so people could see and feel some different kinds of fabric. The dreadful polyester from 1970 threw people off a bit, and some were glad for very limited exposure to wool. A few cottons were pretty good substitutes for period fabrics.  But linen was the big hit.  The local fabric store doesn't sell linen, so we may have a field trip to the Twin Cities in our future.

Replay, Reuse, Recycle

The class on "Medieval Music You Already Know" inspired me to do a class on contrafacta in period. I'd done classes in "filk" - which is a more lighthearted word for the same thing. But this was about filk in period - from fourth century Arian adaptations of popular music, through troubadours borrowing church music for their love songs, to composers using folk tunes as the basis for polyphonic masses.

We looked at borrowings as many as four deep, as a twelfth-century "Ave Regina" chant may have been used for a twelfth century troubadour's love song, which was borrowed for a thirteenth-century pilgrim song, and a thirteenth century song in praise of gluttony.

Anyone who thinks of the middle ages as insular or restrictive might be surprised at the international trade in music. A tune that's still popular today can be found in Italian, Bohemian, Gallican, and German manuscripts of the tenth to fifteenth centuries.

Those who prize originality might be surprised to learn that troubadour instruction manuals prefer that older tunes be used for some types of song.

This was a study that was too much for an hour's class. It could easily fill a dissertation (actually, several of them). I recommend the Musical Borrowing Bibliography as a resource. Though many of its 1800+ citations cover modern music, there's plenty on medieval/renaissance works as well.

Shakespeare made fun of the contrafacting of Greensleeves by Mistress Ford's comment about Falstaff:, whose words, "do no more adhere and keep place together than the Hundredth Psalm to the tune of Green Sleeves." (Merry Wives of Windsor II.i.62) She may not approve, but contrafact was a way of life for musicians in period.