Linda Marie Zaerr

Performance and the Middle English Romance

Linda Marie Zaerr — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 15:01:32 PDT

Although English medieval minstrels performed gestes, a genre closely related to romance, often playing the harp or the fiddle, the question of if, and how, Middle English romance was performed has been hotly debated. Here, the performance tradition is explored by combining textual, historical and musicological scholarship with practical experience from a noted musician. Using previously unrecognised evidence, the author reconstructs a realistic model of minstrel performance, showing how a simple melody can interact with the text, and vice versa. She argues that elements in Middle English romance which may seem simplistic or repetitive may in fact be incomplete, as missing an integral musical dimension; metrical irregularities, for example, may be relics of sophisticated rhythmic variation that make sense only with music. Overall, the study offers both a more accurate comprehension of minstrel performance, and a deeper appreciation of the romances themselves.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Linda Marie Zaerr — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:36:44 PDT

With Shira Kammen and Laura Zaerr.

Bisclavret

Linda Marie Zaerr et al. — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:43 PDT

The 12the century lai Bisclavret (The Werewolf) will be performed in dramatic narrative and period instrument performance by Boise’s new interdisciplinary Medieval performance group, Virelai des Bois.

Bisclavret (The Werewolf) is a lai (poetic narrative used by Northern French poets and storytellers) by 12th century author Marie de France. The story will be told in Middle and Modern English narrative with music on period instruments such as the doucaine (Medieval double reed instrument), vielle (Medieval fiddle) and recorder with countertenor voice.

The Tournament of Tottenham

Linda Marie Zaerr — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:41 PDT

How the Axe Falls: A Retrospective on Twenty-Five Years of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Performance

Linda Marie Zaerr — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:39 PDT

'Fiddling with Middle English Romance: Tuning, Timbre, and Rhythm' and 'Altering Sir Bevis: Precipitating Otherness in Medieval Romance'

Linda Marie Zaerr — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:38 PDT

Sentimental and Humourous Romances [CD]

Linda Marie Zaerr — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:36 PDT

The Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell [VHS]

Linda Marie Zaerr — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:35 PDT

The complete text in Middle English. ISBN 0-8425-2458-4.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight [DVD and VHS]

Linda Marie Zaerr — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:33 PDT

A forty-five-minute performance of Middle English excerpts.

Music and Medieval Narrative [DVD]

Linda Marie Zaerr — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:31 PDT

Commentary and excerpts in Old French and Middle English and a complete performance of The Tournament of Tottenham.

The Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell: Performance and Intertextuality in Middle English Popular Romance

Linda Marie Zaerr — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:28 PDT

Actual performance by a particular voice and body for a physically present audience can provide information that validates and redirects theoretical understanding of textual variation. Paul Zumthor's concept of mouvance, a graphic representation of intertextuality in which virtual models function as the vertical axis and actual variations the horizontal axis,¹ has provided a vehicle for addressing the variation so characteristic of Middle English verse romances. The term mouvance may also be used to describe the degree and quality of variation of a performance event from the text on which it is based.² The mouvance recorded in a memorized performance of The Weddynge of Sir Gawan and Dame Ragnell presented at the Annual Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 1996 displays similarities to textual variants in romance manuscripts. The modern performance may thereby provide clues to the generative process behind some manuscript variants.

The Middle Ages

Stanley F. Steiner et al. — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:26 PDT

Presents a bibliography of children's literature on the Middle Ages.

Psycholinguistic Theory and Modern Performance: Memory as a Key to Variants in Medieval Texts

Mary Ellen Ryder et al. — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:24 PDT

The study of learning and memory has greatly expanded during the last two decades. Instead of limiting themselves to highly constrained, rather artificial laboratory experiments, cognitive psychologists have begun studying tasks more closely related to daily life, such as memory for places, names and faces, testimony of eye-witnesses, and memorization of songs, poems and stories. They have found that many, if not most, such activities involve the construction and storage of complex structures in memory. For example, the evidence suggests that we store in our memories not only individual words, but also an inventory of longer expressions, which are used to increase fluency in oral discourse. In addition, we organize stories and autobiographical memories into complex units which affect their subsequent recall. In this process, events that are not causally related to the goals in a story do not fit well into these memory structures and thus are not usually well recalled. Likewise, events with similar structures, or similar roles in larger structures, are likely to be confused in recall.

When Silence Plays Vielle: The Metaperformance Scenes of Le Roman de Silence in Performance

Linda Marie Zaerr — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:22 PDT

Performance-based exploration of the thirteenth-century Le Roman de Silence can extend discussions of ambiguity by clarifying the experience of the sound of the poem. Homonymic terminology breaks down the boundary between performer and text, while metaperformance elements impose identities of characters on performer and audience.

Songs of Love and Love of Songs: Music and Magic in Medieval Romance

Linda Marie Zaerr — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:20 PDT

Medieval and Modern Deletions of Repellent Passages in Medieval Texts

Linda Marie Zaerr — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:18 PDT

The Middle English popular romances provide some of the most intriguing variants among medieval texts. Deletions in the Middle English manuscripts of Sir Beues of Hamtoun evince characteristics that cannot be entirely explained by scribal activity. The most significant omissions follow two patterns, both of which operate to diminish Princess Josian's active role in the plot. My personal performance experience with another Middle English text may provide insight into the purpose and motivation for these changes and the process which may have engendered them.

Mystical Meaning: The Bell Founder’s Window at York Minster

Linda Marie Zaerr — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:16 PDT

A Stylistic Analysis of Le Roman de Silence

Mary Ellen Ryder et al. — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:14 PDT

Stylistic analysis can demonstrate how the Roman de Silence incorporates deceleration, acceleration, generic expressions, and deaths in non-realized space to diminish perception of Silence’s agency.

Jerome of Moravia's First Fiddle Tuning as an Individualized Modal Framework

Linda Marie Zaerr — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:12 PDT

Only two descriptions of fiddle tuning survive from before the fifteenth century: one by Jerome of Moravia, Paris, ca. 1280; and the other by Jean Vaillant (?), Paris, fourteenth century. Both treatises have been edited by Christopher Page. The tunings in the Jean Vaillant (?) treatise are probably designed for plucked stringed instruments (Remnant 67), especially since the tunings would be inappropriate for a flat-bridged instrument and inconvenient for a curved-bridged instrument.

Fiddling with the Middle English Romance: Using Performance to Reconstruct the Past

Linda Marie Zaerr — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:34:10 PDT