Riddle Songs is an exploration of the overlap between Conner’s involvement in what she describes as ‘free composition’ and the background of her co-conspirator here, the Swiss singer and instrumentalist Hanna Marti, who teaches aspects of historical performance practice at the renowned Schola Cantorum in Basle. The present album incorporates a cycle which is utterly contemporary and through composed one which seems to have emerged in part from the tensions deriving from the unanswered (and probably unanswerable) questions provoked by such speculation. On this new disc Conner accepts the premise that Anglo-Saxon poetry was more likely to have been (at least partially) sung than simply recited, and has thus joined those academics and performers who like to speculate about what such singing might actually have entailed, notwithstanding the apparently oral nature of its conveyance from generation to generation and the absence of any fragments of credible (or useful) musical notation. (If readers have never witnessed Bagby’s exhilirating one-man performance of Beowulf, it is one of the wonders of the age and can be seen here, with subtitles).
It is notable that the booklet includes a heartfelt encomium from Benjamin Bagby, the founder of Sequentia and arguably the doyen of research into medieval performance practice he is also one of Conner’s most influential mentors. If Kenny’s interest lies in the tone colours, mechanics and textures of arcane instruments, Conner’s preoccupation (if this disc is anything to go by) seems to be with the felicities of language, in this case Old English. She similarly seeks to forge new music from ancient materials. Like another estimable musical archaeologist John Kenny (it’s surely no coincidence that a couple of his discs are among the jewels of the Delphian catalogue), Stef Conner has quietly carved out a niche for herself, one seemingly borne out of personal enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity.
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