Riddle Songs

Cover image by Rory O’Bryen

An album of new music with very old words

Stef Conner voice & lyre
Hanna Marti voice & harp
Everlasting Voices, conducted by Jonathan Brigg

Over a decade in the imagining, Stef Conner’s new album Riddle Songs has been something of a dream come true to make – a prog-choral concept album in Old English, inspired the beautifully rich and sophisticated collection of riddles of the tenth-century Exeter Book, bringing together atmospheric, multilayered choral works with solo songs, and duets with the incredible medieval music singer, Hanna Marti.

You can order your copy now, from Delphian Records!

No songs in Old English have survived from the period in which the language was originally used. And yet everything we know of Anglo-Saxon culture – as preserved in written texts or rediscovered by archaeologists – presents a compelling, if tantalisingly incomplete, picture of a society in which the creative impulse was central. For Stef, this incompleteness is not an obstacle but a challenge … to rise to feats of imaginative daring which are also acts of informed historical sympathy. Riddle Songs is a concept album with a difference: a personal vision of a world just out of reach. Its music and its stories, its seasons and its creatures are addressed or conjured up in hymns, spells, and that most Anglo-Saxon of poetic forms – the riddle. Stef’s settings draw on English folksong, medieval music scholarship and a range of unlikelier inspirations to make something entirely her own. In around half the tracks she duets with early-music specialist Hanna Marti, both of them thrillingly poised between creation and rediscovery. In between come richly layered choral set-pieces, while elsewhere she is alone, accompanying herself on a strummed lyre. At the album’s heart is an intimate communion with our ideas of the past, of distance and of nearness, of knowledge and enduring mystery.

The People Who Made the Album Happen…

Riddle Songs could not have been made without the generosity of the project’s Kickstarter backers, who stepped in, with incredible generosity, to plug a rather large funding gap (recording choirs is expensive!), and then waited patiently, while recording issues, Stef’s perfectionism, and then the nightmare of Covid-19 delayed the release by a year! Thank you!

Extra-special thanks are due to the following people, who really went the extra mile to help this project happen:

 

Hilary Hinks

The Mikes, who write:

“To our families here and abroad with love – life is full of wondrous riddles to solve.”

Christine Wallace

Robert O’Bryen

Keith Jobling

Ángeles

Tamsin Vine

Lizzy Maynes

Andrew Casson

Gabi Wartmann

Sally Conner (that’s MUM to Stef), who writes:

“Waes hael!!”

Jonathan

Roberto Castagnaro

Mary Copus

Graham Guest

Hugo!

John Robert Mead

Liana Chua

Thea O’Bryen

Bill Burgwinkle

Ian White

John McClean

Fredy Schnyder

Peter ‘Pirate’ Johnston

Markus Eisenbach

Howard Kistler

Sam Dorf

Elaine McMillan

 

Amanda Jeffries

Steph Parker

Cato Vandrare

Susan M Stickley, who writes:

“Thank you for reviving and expanding on ancient music, it’s important to keep musical heritage.”

Jonathan Green, who writes:

“Looking forward to listening to Riddle Songs while reading/playing through Beowulf Beastslayer.” 

Rhel ná DecVandé

Preston Parish

Jaideep Prabhu

Martina Hornakova

Armand D’Angour

Andrew Brown

John McLeod

Pascal Ruzette

Louise Haywood

Annie Hopkins

Martyn Young

Helena Stevens

Tyler Heibeck

Lynne Curnow

Helen McCabe

Erna von der Walde

Geoff Poole

Clare Dyer-smith

Karen R. Clark

Chris Lawry