Some explanations about the piece:
It is for string quartet, piano, and narrator. The MP3 is Finale + a text-to-speech program for the narrator.
What you'll hear is about half the length of the full piece.
Esnips link.
Midi and Finale can be found below.
BTW, here is the poem up to the end of the music so far. It is a (very) loose translation from the original poem. The author of the original poem used alliterative verse rather than rhyming verse, so I did too.
Listen now to a story of the Danes. Long ago this was.
Sea-farers they were, spear-armed.
Feast-makers and song-singers as well.
Beowulf, their king, was war-hardened and wise.
(Interlude 1)
Those he ruled feared nothing and no one
Save - in tales told as feast-fires died -
The nameless monster: “Scale-ridden serpent,
He snores, smoke-snorting, toothy-grinned,
Atop the gleaming treasures he thieved from our fathers.”
(Interlude 2)
Beowulf vowed vengeance: “I’ll find and finish him!
The wonders wrought of old will be ours once more.”
So saying, he set sail, leaving behind both hearth and high hall
And alone in a long-ship he wandered the whale-ways
A wind from the east blew his boat across the North Sea -
A sea, now as then, stormy and deep.
(Interlude 3)
Until at last he discovered the dank and lonely sea-cave
Where the scaled horror guarded its stolen hoard.
No torch was needed: an unnatural light, green and dim, Glowed from what grew on the salt-spattered walls.
Still have to work on the battle scene
