The Imaginary Song Hunt

This month's Imaginary Song Hunt is a little bit spooky (happy Halloween!)... We're on the trail of ancient tablets that hold intriguing curses and charms.

We spoke to Charlotte Spence – lecturer in ancient history at St Hilda's College, Oxford and expert in ancient curse tablets. Thousands of (mostly lead) tablets survive from across Europe, dating from as early as the 6th century through the end of the first millennium CE. They hold curses covering a range of topics ranging from love (or at least desire) through to stolen possessions and featuring some rather horrible requests for gruesome misfortunes and ailments to befall the "cursee".

We learn from Charlotte how to make a lead curse tablet and inscribe our curse, exploring some of the rituals practices that may have been involve, and, of course, wondering how they might have sounded when spoken (or chanted?!) out loud.

If you want to learn more about this intriguing topic, Charlotte's book 'Appeals to the Supernatural in Ancient Curse Tablets: The Dead and the Divine' is available.

The Imaginary Song Hunt, Episode 10

🎧 The Imaginary Song Hunt is a series about reimagining lost songs from history, using evidence, creativity, and a willingness to step beyond what’s written down.

👉 Follow the hunt on:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lotos-lab

or Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3aFzqum...

or Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

or Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/0...

For everything Imaginary Song Hunt – including side trails, bonus performances, and Stef's Zoom choir – join the Lotos Lab Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lotos_lab

👯‍♀️ For news and updates, sign up to the Imaginary Song Hunt mailing list: https://song.stefconner.com/sign-up-i...

💝 If you enjoyed this episode, you can support the project via the Lotos Lab Tip Jar: https://lotos-lab.com/donate/

Next full episode (4 November 2026): Stef and Jonathan chat about a song recorded in a manuscript from High Medieval England...

This Imaginary Song Hunt continues our trail through the music of one of history's most extraordinary composers: Hildegard von Bingen. This is Part 2 of 2. 

Continuing our conversation with Jasmina Črnčič, we go deeper into the technical side of singing Hildegard's music. Jasmina walks us through her working process, starting with a piece's range, then reducing a melismatic line to its syllabic "skeleton" before layering the ornamentation back in. We explore how Hildegard builds her modes from a mix of narrow, tightly connected phrases and wide leaps, and how the same handful of gestures recur and vary across her output. We also look at Hildegard's joyful mass movement Kyrie eleison and Aer enim volat, the antiphon for St Ursula and her 11,000 Virgins.

This Imaginary Song Hunt is on the trail of one of the most extraordinary composers in music history: Hildegard von Bingen.

We spoke to Jasmina Črnčič, a singer who specialises in singing the music of Hildegard, to learn about Hildegard's life and music. We hear about Hildegard's early life in a monastery, how she later became the abbess of her own convent and was something of a polymath. On top of all of this, she composed a vast range of chants including hymns, liturgical chants and even a music drama. We begin exploring the notation she used and how to go about singing these chants.

We also talk about her mystical visions, as recorded in works such as Scivias, and ask the crucial question: was Hildegard von Bingen on mushrooms?

Because Jasmina has so much to share (and because September has five Wednesdays this year), we'll be releasing a second episode next week (9th September). There we'll delve deeper into how to sing Hildegard's chants as well as looking a little more at some notation and manuscripts...

Sources consulted and discussed:

– Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Solesmes et al. Graduale triplex. Solesmes: Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Solesmes, 1979

– Riesencodex: Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek, Hs. 2 (ca. 1180-85) – available here: https://hlbrm.digitale-sammlungen.hebis.de/handschriften-hlbrm/content/titleinfo/449618

– Dendermonde Codex: Belgium, St.-Pieters-&-Paulusabdij Cod. 9 (Villarenser codex) (ca. 1174/75) – available here: https://data.idemdatabase.org/IE9129581/representation

Ego peccator, Riesencodex, f.480v

Kyrie Eleison, Riesencodex, f.472v

The Imaginary Song Hunt, Episode 8

🎧 The Imaginary Song Hunt is a series about reimagining lost songs from history through evidence, creativity, and a willingness to step beyond what's written down.

👉 Follow the hunt on: YouTube: / @lotos-lab

For news and updates, sign up to the Imaginary Song Hunt mailing list: https://song.stefconner.com/sign-up-i...

If you enjoyed this episode, you can support the project via the Lotos Lab Tip Jar: https://lotos-lab.com/donate/  or by joining our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/Lotos_Lab/

Next full episode (9 September 2026): Stef and Jasmina discuss Jasmina's approach to singing Hildegard and delve deeper into some notation and manuscripts...

The Imaginary Song Hunt, Episode 5, July 2026

This episode of Imaginary Song Hunt is on the trail of the amazing but very fragmentary papyrus containing the oldest Christian hymn for which a melody survives.

We chatted with Stefan Hagel (Austrian Academy of Sciences), to try to get to grips with the historical evidence and interpretation of the ancient text, and to Anastasios Vasilopoulos (a Greek Orthodox cantor), to find out more about one of the hymn's living performances... and to hear him demonstrate a Modern Greek version, as interpreted by the Greek Byzantine Choir.

You'll hear two very different versions of the hymn in the episode – Stefan's rendition for voice and kithara, with reconstructed period pronunciation, including only the parts of the papyrus that can be confidently read/restored, and the Greek Byzantine Choir's Modern interpretation, which includes Egert Pölmann's (1970) supplementary text, filling in the holes on the manuscript. Both include a little imagination, but the latter considerably more than the former.

Because both our guests had so much wonderful insight to share (and because July has 5 Wednesdays this year), we're releasing a second episode on 29th July, delving deeper into the rhythm of the hymn and exploring parallels with other ancient Christian songs. In this episode, you'll hear Barnaby and Stef attempting to sing the ison (drone) for Anastasios, while he sings the Cherubikon – another beautiful ancient hymn with some compelling thematic parallels. Join us!

See below for the sources consulted and mentioned:

- Pöhlmann, Egert. Denkmäler altgriechischer Musik: Sammlung, Übertragung und Erläuterung aller Fragmente und Fälschungen. Erlanger Beiträge zur Sprach- und Kunstwissenschaft 31. Nürnberg: Hans Carl, 1970.

- Charles H. Cosgrove. An Ancient Christian Hymn with Musical Notation: Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1786: Text and Commentary. Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 65. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011, 37.

🎧 The Imaginary Song Hunt is a series about reimagining lost songs from history, using evidence, creativity, and a willingness to step beyond what’s written down.

👉 Follow the hunt on: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lotos-lab?sub_confirmation=1 or Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3aFzqumrVPAqLeSMU7b68k?si=ab002adfb70e4f8b or Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-imaginary-song-hunt/id1889937980 or Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/053de0d8-1daf-4bb7-b0a1-e95d61c53135/the-imaginary-song-hunt?ref=dm_sh_IDCz6Kic0NaHH9KAPacKXQsFQ

For everything Imaginary Song Hunt – including side trails, bonus performances and Stef’s Zoom choir – join the Lotos Lab Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Lotos_Lab

👯‍♀️ For all the news and updates sign up for the Imaginary Song Hunt mailing list: https://song.stefconner.com/sign-up-imaginary-song-hunt

💝 Show your appreciation via the Lotos Lab Tip Jar: https://lotos-lab.com/donate/

Next full episode (29th July 2026): Stef and Barnaby explore ancient texts related to the earliest Christian hymn... and have a go at Byzantine chant!

In this episode of Imaginary Song Hunt, we learn about the life and music of Sappho with Reading University’s Professor of Greek, Ian Rutherford.

Who was Sappho and where do we find the details of her biography? What is a Sapphic Stanza and how should we sing it? Did people dance to Sappho’s music? We tackle all these questions and more in this exploration of history, poetry and rhythm.

By the end we get a teeny little bit closer to answering the question of how to sing Sappho.

🎧 The Imaginary Song Hunt is a series about reimagining lost songs from history, using evidence, creativity, and a willingness to step beyond what’s written down.

👉  For everything Imaginary Song Hunt including side trails, bonus performances and Stef’s Zoom choir, join the Lotos Lab Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Lotos_Lab

👯‍♀️ For all the news and updates sign up for the Imaginary Song Hunt mailing list: https://song.stefconner.com/sign-up-imaginary-song-hunt

💝 Lotos Lab Tip Jar: https://lotos-lab.com/donate/

Next full episode (1st July 2026): Stef and Barnaby sing the earliest Christian hymn 

In this episode of the Imaginary Song Hunt, we go hunting for Scottish Canntaireachd – the practice of singing Pibroch (the musical tradition of the Great Highland Bagpipe).

Piping maestro, Lotos Lab’s own Barnaby Brown guides us through the murky undergrowth of Scottish bagpiping history, and explains how pipers have traditionally learned their craft through singing.

After delving into cultural history, notation and traditional practices, we focus on a single pibroch, the stunningly beautiful lament, Cumha Alasdair Dheirg ("Lament for Alasdair Dearg").

If you'd like to try singing this gorgeous piece, you can access the Urlar (its main section, arranged to suit easy aural leaning) for free here: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.32190912

Or you can head over to the Lotos Lab shop or join our Patreon for the full piece.

By the end we try to answer the question: how can (or perhaps should) we sing canntaireachd today?

For everything Imaginary Song Hunt including side trails, bonus performances and Stef’s zoom choir join the Lotos Lab Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Lotos_Lab

👯‍♀️ For all the news and updates sign up for the Imaginary Song Hunt mailing list: https://song.stefconner.com/sign-up-imaginary-song-hunt

Next full episode (3rd June 2026): we head to Lesbos to explore the (now) fragmentary world of Sapphic song...

In this episode of Imaginary Song Hunt, we continue our search for a lost songbook from the court of Charlemagne. Medievalist and codicologist James Freeman joins us to explore a deceptively simple question: if this legendary book of barbara et antiquissima carmina (“ancient vernacular songs”) once existed, what would it actually take to reconstruct – or even convincingly fake – it?

Shifting focus from sound to source, we dig into the material realities of manuscripts: how they were made, how they survive, and what makes them believable as historical objects. From parchment and ink to scribal hand, this episode asks: how close you could get to producing a manuscript that might actually fool an expert?

🎧 The Imaginary Song Hunt is a series about reimagining lost songs from history, using evidence, creativity, and a willingness to step beyond what’s written down.

👉 Follow the hunt on

👯‍♀️ To join the Patreon, when it launches on 1st May, sign up for the Imaginary Song Hunt mailing list: https://song.stefconner.com/sign-up-imaginary-song-hunt

💝 Lotos Lab Tip Jar: https://lotos-lab.com/donate/

Next full episode (6th May 2026): we introduce Canntaireachd, a technique of chanting "vocables" to sing instrumental melodies, associated with bagpipe music.

Most of the songs people have ever sung are lost...

In this episode of Imaginary Song Hunt, we go looking for one of the most tantalising missing sources of all: a lost songbook from the court of Charlemagne. We asked medieval music performer Benjamin Bagby (Sequentia, Beowulf) a simple question: "what’s the source you most wish existed, but doesn’t?" His answer was irresistible — a lost book of barbara et antiquissima carmina (“barbarian and ancient songs”), said by Einhard to have been commissioned by Charlemagne himself.

So we set out to imagine what it might take to bring that songbook back… and how far you could go in making it "real"... From fragments of evidence, surviving traditions, and a bit of informed imagination, we begin to sketch the outline of a musical world that has completely disappeared. This is where the hunt begins.

Imaginary Song Hunt is a series about reimagining lost songs from history — using evidence, creativity, and a willingness to step beyond what’s written down.

👉 If you enjoyed this episode, please make a contribution to the Lotos Lab Tip Jar

Next full episode (15th April 2026): how you would create a believable “lost” medieval songbook, from parchment to ink to notation.