The Sutton Hoo Lyre

Biographer Kate Kennedy unearths five forgotten objects from the Museum of Music History that provide a key to recreating the lives of their owners and sounds of their past. In this episode, the sound of an Anglo-Saxon King’s lyre reimagined.

Amongst the museum’s collection of musical instruments is a modern reproduction of an ancient seven-string lyre, with little wooden pegs, around which are woven gut strings. It’s a replica of an instrument dating back to Anglo-Saxon times, made in the 1960s for a pioneering musicologist, the late Mary Remnant. It’s an imaginative reconstruction from a handful of surviving fragments of an instrument, discovered in a medieval King’s ship in the Sutton Hoo burial grounds in Suffolk.

Every generation has something to add to the mysterious role of the lyre and its original sound, as Kate Kennedy discovers when, armed with Mary Remnant’s lyre, she meets Sutton Hoo archaeologist Angus Wainwright. The lyre invites us not only into the sound-world of music from a far distant time, but it also tells us about the ways in which music and words were conjoined in Anglo-Saxon times.

Presented by Dr Kate Kennedy
Produced by Adrian Washbourne
Mixed by Julian Mayers
Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar
A YadaYada Production for BBC Radio 3