Lectures in Music Studies: Benjamin Bagby, director of Sequentia

Benjamin Bagby is coming to the Music and Dance Library on Thursday, October 22, for a lecture on finding the lost voice of early medieval song. It's part of the Lectures in Music Studies series, which the library hosts on its second floor.

Bagby is the co-founder and director of Sequentia, the award-winning international ensemble that's been performing and recording early medieval repertoire since 1977. He's a vocalist, a medieval harpist, and a scholar who has taught at the Sorbonne in Paris, and he's studied at Oberlin College and Conservatory and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland. As a soloist, he's known for his reconstructions of epic poems and stories that were originally performed by medieval bards—texts that were written down, but whose music was never notated. He fills in those gaps using clues like contemporaneous modality, and he's also interested in how the voice and the harp work together, with the harp providing modal structure and rhythmic impulses.

If you're not familiar with the music, it's a deep dive into a world that's mostly gone. The bards he's reconstructing were the storytellers of their day, and the music they played lived in the air rather than on a page. Bagby's work is about figuring out how those songs might have sounded, and this lecture is his take on that process. It's a good chance to hear how he approaches the material, from the scholarly research to the actual performance.

The lecture runs from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM at the Music and Dance Library, room 205, at 175 W. 18th Ave. in Columbus. It's free and open to the public, and no ticket is required.