Music Review: Apocalypse, Described In Visions Of Long Ago

Benjamin Bagby has put his bardic re-creation of the “Beowulf” epic behind him, but he is clearly still drawn to the dark and terrifying in projects for Sequentia, his early-music group.

Benjamin Bagby (left) and Norbert Rodenkirchen (right) performing at the Corpus Christi Church.

“Fragments for the End of Time,” the program he brought to the Music Before 1800 series at Corpus Christi Church on Sunday afternoon, concerned itself with apocalyptic visions from both the first millennium of European Christianity and earlier pagan sources (including “Beowulf” and the Icelandic epic “Voluspa.”)

For the occasion Sequentia was a duo, with Mr. Bagby singing and playing the harp, and Norbert Rodenkirchen playing the harp and wooden flutes of various sizes and pitches. Both musicians were credited with the reconstructions, jointly and individually. For variety, vocal works were interspersed with instrumental works, which tended to be the concert’s bright moments: mostly played by Mr. Rodenkirchen, these flute pieces began with simple, appealing melodies, sometimes folkish, sometimes chantlike, and were then expanded upon in ornate, energetic improvisations.

The vocal works, all told, were pretty grim. You definitely don’t want to be around for the end of time as these early Christian writers describe it, but then, not being around doesn’t get you out of it, because, they warn, the dead will be bodily resurrected, the better to be judged and punished. In several pieces — among them “Sin tac piqueme, daz er touuan scal,” which seemed to mix Latin and old High German, and “Thes habet er ubar woroltring,” in Frankish, a German dialect — the vocal writing is dour and declamatory. If Mr. Bagby projected the persona of a medieval epic poet in his “Beowulf” production, here he seemed to be channeling an ancient Northern European monk preaching fire and brimstone, to a light harp accompaniment.

When Mr. Bagby and Mr. Rodenkirchen turned their attention to the pagan epics, the music seemed more dramatic and theatrical, as did the performances. That was probably inevitable. The excerpt from “Voluspa,” for example, is the prediction of an ancient seeress about the final battle between the gods and their enemies, the giants.

A glossary would have been useful to provide context for the few dozen names and places mentioned, all clearly important to the saga but meaningless to a 21st-century New Yorker. Still, if you’ve seen “Götterdämmerung” and “The Lord of the Rings,” you get the basic idea. As a singer, Mr. Bagby was in his element.

The next Music Before 1800 concert will be a performance by the Clerkes Group on Feb. 3 at Corpus Christi Church, 529 West 121st Street, Morningside Heights; (212) 555-9266, concerts@mb1800.org.

Tag Cloud

External Information

Additional Information

Where Am I?