Fitters’ Workshop, Canberra
May 5, 2018

“Hwaet!” bellowed Benjamin Bagby in Canberra’s Fitters’ Workshop. Six-stringed Anglo-Saxon harp in hand, the mediaevalist cried out the formal call to listen that begins the epic poem Beowulf in the Fitters’ Workshop for the 20th concert of the Canberra International Music Festival. Taking on the role of ‘scop’ – the oral poet, singer and storyteller – Bagby sung, recited and chanted his way through the first third of the epic Anglo-Saxon poem – the story of Beowulf’s defeat of the monster Grendel – in Old English and from memory, accompanying his performance on a recreation of a harp excavated from a 7th-century nobleman’s grave in Oberflacht, near Stuttgart.

Benjamin Bagby performs Beowulf at the Canberra International Music Festival. Photo © Peter Hislop

The one extant copy of the Beowulf text – which was discovered alongside a strange collection of fascinatingly disparate texts and in 1731 came heart-stoppingly close to being destroyed by fire – dates from the early 11th century AD but some scholars argue the poem was first penned as early as the sixth century and there is little doubt it has...