Siege of Paris Music & Lyrics
Music: Teresa of Attilium & Ashley Hill
Lyrics: Katie Blanchard
Background: We wrote “Siege of Paris” for a Bardic performance at Ymir 2018 in the Barony of Windmasters Hill. The theme was “Vikings versus French,” and we wanted to write a song about the Viking sieges of Paris. We decided to tell the story by having the first two lines of each verse sung from the French perspective, and the second two lines from the Viking, with all the singers coming together to find common ground on the chorus. Katie did some research and decided that while the Vikings sieged Paris in a series of attacks spanning from 845 to 885 C.E., we didn’t have a century to sing the song, and so she collapsed the century of Vikings attacks down to one for the sake of artistic expediency.
We tasked my friend Ashley to help us get a modal harmony going on the chorus. This was the first song we all wrote together, and while it doesn’t strictly follow a documentable period structure, we decided it was pretty close and we would work on more authentic compositions later.
The PDF document above has the link to the sheet music and lyrics. Here is a video of Voices of Attilium performing at Ymir 2018.
Teresa of Attilium 