Battle-Pieces audiobook project

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HugoBall

Hugo Ball, Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, 1916. He has nothing to do with Melville’s Civil War poetry. He just kind of became the class mascot after we spent an entire session on the recitation of “Gadji Beri Bimba.”

In fall 2012, students in my American Poetry class recorded an audio book of Herman Melville’s civil war poems for LibriVox.org, a wonderful organization that provides free audio books of works in the public domain. Here is just a little information about our project.

The class divided into three recording teams, and each student had at least one designated role in the process. Roles included directors, primary readers, historical dramaturgs, and sound technicians. A single project manager helped to coordinate the work of all three teams.

Each team read through Battle-Pieces and decided which poems they would like to record. Sometimes an individual reader would feel a strong connection and want to read a particular poem. Jon Brien, for example, was eager to kick off the the whole collection with his reading of “The Portent.”

In some cases, an entire team would have a concept for the poem, as in this interpretation of “Donelson,” the only poem in the collection to make use of multiple voices. Their choice works well to convey the many points of view which make up this poem.

In quite a few cases, more than one team wanted a particular poem. We decided to audition competing claimants, and the class as a whole decided which interpretations and which voices best suited some of the most popular poems. Jason DeMartini eventually won the most hotly contested poem in the collection, “The House-top,” but the competition was fierce from Laura Mathew and My Bui (who was kicking it old school, reciting from memory!). We even recorded the “The Battle for Battle-Pieces,” our very own competition reality show:

MyBuiBattleBattlePieces

you gotta fight
for your right
to recite

Back to main LibriVox page.

Michael Metcalfe, sermon notebook pages (Houghton Librar

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Inside Michael Metcalfe’s notebook you can see that he recorded different kinds of information at different times. Unlike the outside cover, here Metcalfe also records statements of Doctine. Like Richard Russell (see previous gallery), Metcalfe records in both directions of his notebook. Unlike Russell, however, he works his way all the way through the book in one direction and then all the way through inthe other, finally filling the notebook with what he deems the essential information of sermons (especially “occasional” sermons, i.e. preached for a specific occasion such as a day of thanksgiving or an ordination) over the course of several years.

Courtesy of the Houghton Library.

Metcalfe, M. (Michael). Notes: on sermons: manuscript, 1689-92. MS Am 1065. Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Michae Metcalfe, sermon notebook cover (Houghton Library)

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Michael Metcalfe’s little handmade notebook offers a great example of how someone might adapt the oblong (steno style) notebook used by Daniel Russell. (See previous gallery.) Thick twine is used to sew the top spine, and there is no cover to protect the inside pages. The little volume is precious to its owner/maker despite (or perhaps precisely because of) its improvised, handmade quality. On the reverse side of this notebook, Metcalfe notes “This is my 2 vollam [volume] that I made of this Sort of Works.”

Although the irregularity of the handwriting in some places might suggest the writer was not entirely comfortable with writing, the notebook creator is likely the same Michael Metcalfe who kept school. The partial alphabet that appears midway through the page is an example of “pen trial” or “pen testing,” a common practice for testing to make sure the ink was running well in the pen. Repetitious copying of one’s name or of a single phrase are also common evidence of pen testing along with alphabetical and numeric strings.

Courtesy of the Houghton Library.

Metcalfe, M. (Michael). Notes: on sermons: manuscript, 1689-92. MS Am 1065. Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Daniel Russell, sermon notebook page detail (American Antiquarian Society)

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Reading 17th-century handwriting can be difficult. Daniel Russell’s handwriting here is quite consistent, even if the shapes of the letters are unfamiliar to the modern reader. In fact, Russell’s notebook contains careful copies of his own sermons, so the handwriting is perhaps more clear than it would be if it were an auditor notebook. Some links on the “Resources” page provide handy training for anyone interested in learning to read early modern handwriting.

Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

Daniel Russell, sermon notebook pages (American Antiquarian Society)

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Although Daniel Russell records copies of his own sermons in this notebook, the style is common for auditor notes. The oblong format (not unlike the modern reporter’s notebook or steno pad) allows the recorder to go all the way to the edge of the paper. In notebooks bound like standard book, writing space is lost in the gutter near the spine of the book. Note also that Daniel Russell reserves minimal margin space at the left-hand edge of the paper for structural markers and scriptural citations. This narrow margin is more typical of auditor notebooks than are the wide margins of Richard Russell’s book. For a handmade version of this same oblong format, see Michael Metcalfe’s book in the next gallery.

Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

Daniel Russell, sermon notebook binding (American Antiquarian Society)

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The inside cover of Daniel Russell’s book shows the sturdy simplicity with which it was constructed. Visible are the two ties that to which the gathered leaves of the text block were sewn and also attached to the boards that make up the cover. Also visible is the leather as it was originally stretch over the outer boards to form a sturdy cover.

Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

Richard Russell, sermon notebook page (American Antiquarian Society)

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Richard Russell’s book contained rules on each page to delineate space at the head, foot, and outer margin. The side margin was a particularly important space for sermon notes, as this is where the auditor could put in notations of the sermon structure (Reason, Doctrine, Use, etc.) and scriptural citations. While some notetakers had extremely narrow margins (and sometimes no margins at all), Russel maintains a spacious, even margin suggestive (along with the size and format of the book itself) of a print sermon. Russsell is remarkably generous with the white space of his page. Typically notetakers fill in every bit of page with writing, and, in fact, as times goes on Russell seems to let his writing overlap into the margin more and more. Quite probably his next sermon notebook would have less copious margin space marked out.

Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

Richard Russell, sermon notebook in two directions (American Antiquarian Society)

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Richard Russell essentially made one notebook work as two. He would record the morning sermon in one direction in his notebook, being careful to write only halfway down each page. For the afternoon sermon, he simply flipped his book and wrote in the other direction. This two-direction recording in notebooks was extremely practical and fairly common. When referring to the text in such handwritten books, archivists typically refer to Part One and Part Two in order to distinguish the two overlapping texts.

Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.