From the album Paths of Exile by Kantos Chamber Choir, conducted by Ellie Slorach
The Wanderer is an anonymous Old English poem, written in Anglo Saxon, which is preserved in The Exeter Book, a collection of manuscripts which probably dates back to the late tenth century, along with other poems including The Seafarer. Both poems have been arranged for men’s voices by Tim Benjamin, and recorded by Kantos Chamber Choir conducted by Ellie Slorach on their new album Paths of Exile. A review of The Seafarer can be found in the previous edition of the Off the Beaten Track series. The author and date of the poem are unknown, although it is thought that it dates back to the late ninth or early tenth century.
The poem in The Exeter Book has no title; just as Schubert’s Schwanengesang song cycle wasn’t named by the composer himself, The Wanderer wasn’t named until (long) after the poet’s death. It wasn’t given that name until centuries later, in 1842 when Benjamin Thorpe took the word ‘eardstepa’ (literally ‘earth-stepper’ or ‘wanderer’) from the body of the poem. Other scholars, such as J.R.R. Tolkien, who was Professor of Anglo Saxon at Oxford University as well as being a novelist, have suggested that it should have been given a different title. He argued that An Exile, Alone the Banished Man or The Exile’s Lament would be more appropriate, but the old title has stuck.
The poem recounts, in the first person, the story of an exiled warrior who wanders the earth and the sea, having lost his comrades, his family and his lord in battle. He recalls the gifts he received from his master and the feast they enjoyed. The hardships he describes are at times very similar to those experienced by the seafarer in the poem of that name, which feels like a companion work to The Wanderer. These words from the latter poem feel as if they could have come from The Seafarer,
‘Then he awakens, a friendless man,
Seas before him, the barren waves,
Sea-birds bathing, preening their feathers,
In rime, in snow-fall, and hail there mingling.‘
Both poems have a surprisingly contemporary resonance; as Benjamin says of The Wanderer,
I found that – despite the ten or more centuries dividing us! – I could somehow strongly relate to the anonymous writer. I feel that there is something distinctively “male” about his approach to his grief and loss that I find in myself and in other men (“a man his thoughts fast bind, hiding his mind-hoard…”)
As with his setting of The Seafarer, Benjamin has adapted a modern English translation of The Wanderer by A.S. Kline, changing some of the words to make the text easier to sing and more intelligible for listeners. Benjamin uses Kline’s abridged version which removes the short introduction and conclusion of the poem, which according to Kline is for reasons of ‘artistic coherence.’ The missing passages describe the wanderer in the third person, and make it clear that his experiences are recalled in later contemplation. By removing these sections, the poetry becomes more immediate as we are immediately plunged into the wanderer’s predicament, and in the present tense, ‘Oft I alone must utter my sadness each day before dawn.’ Perhaps more importantly, the removed sections are much more explicitly Christian than the rest of the poem, just as the final section of The Seafarer is, which has also been removed in the Kline translation (and in many others) that Benjamin uses. The Seafarer poem uses a lot of alliteration, and that applies also to The Wanderer. As Benjamin said in a recent email to Nick Holmes Music,
I wanted to try and preserve as much as possible of the alliteration that the original had…as this is a kind of “rhythm” that you can work with as a composer. Actually much more favourable to the composer than rhyming. (I think of alliteration as a sort of “rhyming” with the front of words rather than the ends of words and I greatly prefer to work with it as a composer!)
The Wanderer also shares with The Seafarer what Benjamin describes as a ‘melancholic nostalgia.’ In the latter poem it manifests itself more in the sense that all human power and endeavour is ultimately pointless because everything fades, but the sentiment is very similar. Benjamin describes it very eloquently – and passionately,
‘[The Wanderer] relates his sense of loss to the world at large, that the world itself is fleeting, and for me I found myself melancholic or nostalgic for the world as it was in my younger days – and then extending to an imagined or collective kind of melancholic nostalgia for the world as it was in earlier decades or centuries, which I feel is a reaction to a world that seems today to change or spin out of control and become less and less familiar the more one sees of it. It’s a strange sensation and one that I feel The Wanderer captures in an extraordinary way.’
Nostalgia for past glories is a literary trope known as the Ubi Sunt (Latin for ‘where are they.’). It appears in these lines from the poem,
Where is the horse now?
Where is the rider?
Where is the gold-giver?
Where is the seat at the gathering?
Where now are the songs in the halls?
Benjamin says that this passage, ‘forms the peak of the dramatic arc in my setting of The Wanderer.’ Readers of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings may be familiar with these words as they are adapted by Tolkien to form the Lament for the Rohirrim, a poem chanted by Aragorn in chapter six of The Two Towers.
As with the recording of The Seafarer, Benjamin adds evocative soundscaping. The wind noises that appear throughout may remind some listeners of the ominous sound effects at the opening of the brutal Pink Floyd instrumental ‘One of These Days’ from their 1971 album Meddle. And the thunder effect about half way through the piece recalls a similar effect at the start of the track ‘Black Sabbath’ from Black Sabbath’s eponymously named 1970 album. The military drums evoke the warriors that the wanderer has left behind. The gritty scenario of the poem is similar to that described in Robert Eggers’ 2002 film The Northman which is set at the very end of the ninth century, almost exactly the time when The Wanderer is thought to have been written. There are also seabirds, as there are in the soundscape for The Seafarer.
The musical language Benjamin uses is the same as in The Seafarer, the plainsong-like tone again based on the tonus peregrinus . This is particularly appropriate for The Wanderer as it’s associated with the theme of exile of the Hebrews in Psalm 114 (or 113). Benjamin notes on his website that, ‘the reciting tone also “wanders”, such that the tone does not fit any of the standard eight church modes.’
The solo voice is recorded here mostly with less echo than the voice on The Seafarer, giving it a more intimate feel so that we share the wanderer’s journey, although more echo is added later. Sometimes there are gentle vocal harmonies around the voice, and some subtle electronics. The main soloist, baritone Jonny Hill, is excellent throughout, often robust but sometimes singing with a fragile, delicate tone when the text demands it. The overall effect of the recording is one of passionate melancholy, if that’s not a contradiction in terms. It makes a fine companion to The Seafarer both musically and thematically, and the recording as a whole is highly recommended.
Performers
Kantos Chamber Choir: Jonny Hill (main soloist on The Wanderer), James Connolly (main soloist on The Seafarer), Henry Saywell, Edmund Phillips; conductor Ellie Slorach.
Paths of Exile is out now. Tim Benjamin’s setting of The Seafarer is discussed here.