With Riddle Songs, Stef Connor has composed an album of songs setting Old English texts. Since no music survives from the early Anglo-Saxon era (and the music was unlikely notated anyway), Connor was obliged – or, perhaps better, was at liberty – to compose the sort of music she imagined might best fit those words, thus to conjure the historical world in which they were written. She describes Riddle Songs as ‘an album of new music with very old words’: aside from a smattering of beautifully dissonant choral harmonies, though, the music in truth also sounds old in character. The result, a satellite of medieval chant (a mentor of Connor’s was Benjamin Bagby), is an appealingly imaginative listening experience.

The 20 Riddle Songs comprise solo songs sung by Connor accompanying herself on lyre, duets with Hanna Marti, and choral songs by Everlasting Voices. After a solo prelude, ‘Fire’ for chorus and soloists (Christopher O’Gorman, Jamie Wright and Graham Bier) throws us into an elemental world. The choir mostly sing in homophonic blocks, with occasional polyphonic flourishes, and the harmonies judiciously switch from modal to chromatic in unexpected places, occasionally sounding like the likes of Takemitsu. Duets such as ‘Caute cane’ are reminiscent of the Notre Dame School, while the solo ‘Hall-joy’ is much more rustic and folksy. All the usual debates about historically informed performance can be left aside by the power of the music.

The setting of the famous ‘Caedmon’s Hymn’ features lively vocal interplay between Connor and Marti and bare strummed lyre. Marti co-writes some of the songs, and her ‘Caute cane’ has the character of a medieval motet. The booklet notes include translations of the lyrics and a detailed essay on the research and the compositional and harmonic techniques underlying the music. The recording, made at the University of Huddersfield, is crisp but spacious. Mostly sedate in character, Riddle Songs is not so much introverted as contemplative, a historical perspective not only on the past but on the present.