Völuspá [working title]

by Richard Cornell

For premiere in Fall 2019

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Scored for solo voice, percussion, and electronics.

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Sung in Old Norse.

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Völuspá, or The Prophecy of the Seeress is the first chapter of the Edda. In this first chapter, the ‘völva’, or seeress, addresses Odin (also known as ‘Wotan’), and tells both the creation story of the world and predicts its coming end. The text is preserved in several manuscript sources from the 13th and 14th centuries, but its origins are in an oral tradition that dates much earlier.