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Ma bouche rit et ma pens​é​e pleure

from Johannes Ockeghem: Complete Songs, Volume 2 by Blue Heron

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1420-1497) was one of the most celebrated musicians of the fifteenth century and one of the greatest composers of all time. He was every bit the equal of J.S. Bach in contrapuntal technique and profound expressivity, and like Bach able to combine the most rigorous intellectual structure with a beguiling sensuality. His two
    dozen songs set French lyric poetry in the courtly forms of his era—rondeau, virelai, and ballade—to exquisitely crafted polyphony in which all voices are granted equally beautiful and compelling melodies.

    This CD is the companion to Blue Heron’s 2019 release, Johannes Ockeghem: Complete Songs, Volume 1, which was named to the Bestenliste of the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik and acclaimed in Gramophone for “performances of absolute clarity, beautifully in tune, beautifully balanced and beautifully recorded”; Early Music enthused that “the Boston-based ensemble is at its finest—a summit quite sublime.… The group’s extraordinary rapport with the music is evident everywhere in the recording; each melodic line is not only clear and precise but also imbued with obvious affection.”

    Besides twelve of Ockeghem’s songs, the disc includes two related works (Gilles Binchois’s Pour prison, quoted by Ockeghem in his song La despourveue, and Johannes Cornago’s Qu’es mi vida, arranged by Ockeghem) and an anoymous instrumental arrangement of Ockeghem’s Je n’ay dueil. The CD booklet contains complete texts and translations, and notes by music historian Sean Gallagher and Blue Heron’s artistic director, Scott Metcalfe.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Johannes Ockeghem: Complete Songs, Volume 2 via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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lyrics

Ma bouche rit et ma pensée pleure,
Mon oeil s’esjoye et mon cueur mauldit l’eure
Qu’il eut le bien que sa sancté deschace
Et le plaisir que la mort me pourchace
Sans resconfort qui m’aide ne sequeure.

Ha cueur pervers, faulsaire et mansongier,
Dictez comment avez osé songier
Que de faulser ce que m’avez promis.

Puis qu’en ce point vous vous voulez venger,
Pensez bien tost de ma vie abreger :
Vivre ne puis ou point ou m’avez mis.

Vostre pitié vieult doncques que je meure,
Mays rigeur vieult que vivant je demeure ;
Ainsi meurs vif et en vivant trespasse.
Pour celer le mal qui point ne se passe
Et pour couvrir le dueil ou je labeure,

My mouth laughs and my thoughts weep,
my eye rejoices and my heart curses the hour
when it enjoyed the good that destroys its health
and the pleasure that brings me death,
deprived of comfort to aid or succor me.

Ah, heart! perverse, false, and lying,
say how you dared to dream
of breaking the promise you made to me.

Since you wish to avenge yourself to this degree,
think of soon cutting short my life:
I cannot live in the plight in which you’ve placed me.

Your pity, then, wants me to die,
but your harshness wants me to survive,
thus I die alive, and living pass away.
To hide the woe which has no end
and to conceal the grief in which I struggle,

credits

from Johannes Ockeghem: Complete Songs, Volume 2, released April 12, 2024
Sophie Michaux, Jason McStoots, Scott Metcalfe

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Blue Heron Boston, Massachusetts

Winner of the 2018 Gramophone Classical Music Award for Early Music (the first non-European group to win the award), Blue Heron (Scott Metcalfe, dir.) has been acclaimed by The Boston Globe as “one of the Boston music community’s indispensables” and hailed by Alex Ross in The New Yorker for the “expressive intensity” of its interpretations. ... more

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