[Bards] Differing Styles

[Jay Rudin]

Brian asked:

> Gwen's question about "differing styles" leads me to ask:  What
> are your opinions on requiring differing styles?  I personally like
> it because it shows diversity, but your take on the matter may vary.

Speaking as a performer who might be entering a competition, I am neither for or against.  People can set up any competition they want, and if they want us to compose original haiku while standing on a chair on one leg with a finger in our left ear, that's their business.  We will then each decide if we wish to enter.

But as a way to "show diversity", it is no more successful than most diversity programs, and for the same reasons.  It assumes that diversity is a binary function, and cannot exist within these classes.  Song is different from poem, but one poem is not different from another poem.

Consider two performers: one sings a sappy Provencal tragic love song, recites a sappy Provencal tragic love poem, and tells a sappy Provencal tragic love story.  Another recites stirring battles scenes from Beowulf in Saxon alliterative verse, followed by a comic bawdy verse of his own devising in ballad measure, and then his own translation of a Petrarchan love sonnet in a correct iambic pentameter.

Which one has displayed the greater diversity?  More importantly, which one shows the greater ability to perform for any audience in any mood?

Finally, as a judge, I am well aware that when competitions require multiple styles, we spend more time listening to poorly-paced stories, off-key songs, and droning poems.

Besides, there are a lot of unused ways to encourage actual diversity:

1. First piece judged by the ladies pavilion, second piece judged by the fighters, third piece judged by the populace at the late night drunken party.  (A truly subtle bard might perform a great war piece for the ladies, a comic piece for the fighters, and a stirring praise of Ansteorra for the party)

2. War, love and honor

3. Pre-medieval, medieval, Renaissance

4. Period work, original work, work by a different Ansteorran bard.

5. Tragedy, comedy, adventure

6. "Three pieces that show the breadth of your abilities".  (No set rules.  Let the bards decide what the breadth of their abilities really means.)

7. Your best piece, your personal favorite piece, and your first good piece.  (Mine would be three poems, bu they would be very different.)

8. Individual performer, group performance, audience participation piece

9. (This one was used for a kingdom Eisteddfodd in the late 1990s)  Must do pieces for three of the Muses:
Calliope: heroic saga
Clio: history
Euterpe: song
Erato: erotic or love song or verse
Melpomene: tragedy
Polyhymnia: sacred writings
Tepsichore: narrative dance
Thalia: bucolic or comic verse
Urania (astronomy): tales of the Black Star (stories about Ansteorrans)

One of the advantages of many of these is that they leave open the possibility of an unexpected and creative approach to the rules.  When the muse format was used for kingdom Eisteddfod, HL Kat impressed me most with her innovative approach.  She opened with a piece for Euterpe -- no surprise, since her forte is singing.  But the piece turned out to be a *poem* written in praise of the muse of song.

In short, once we have accepted diversity as a goal, having diverse forms of competition clearly shows more diversity than just the continued use of the story / song / poem trichotomy

Robin of Gilwell / Jay Rudin
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