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Biauté qui toutes autres pere

from A 14th​-​Century Salmagundi by Blue Heron

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lyrics

Biauté qui toutes autres pere,
Envers moy diverse et estrange,
Doucour fine a mon goust amere,
Corps digne de toute loange,
Simple vis a cuer d’ayment,
Regart pour tuer un amant,
Semblant de joie et response d’esmay
M’ont a ce mis que pour amer mourray.

Detri d’otri que moult compere,
Bel Acuel qui de moy se vange,
Amour marrastre et non pas mere,
Espoir qui de joie m’estrange,
Povre secours, desir ardant,
Triste penser, cuer souspirant,
Durté, Desdaing, Dangier et Refus qu’ay
M’ont a ce mis que pour amer mourray.

Si vueil bien qu’a ma dame appere
Qu’elle ma joie en doulour change
Et que sa belle face clere
Me destruit, tant de meschief san ge,
Et que je n’ay revel ne chant
N’ainsi com je sueil plus ne chant
Pour ce qu’Amours, mi oeil et son corps gay
M’ont a ce mis que pour amer mourray.


Translation:

Beauty which is peer of all others,
towards me inconstant and distant,
exquisite sweetness, bitter to my taste,
body worthy of all praise,
innocent countenance with heart of steel,
a glance to kill a lover,
joyful appearance and distressing reply
have brought me to this, that for love I shall die.

Delay in requiting, which costs dearly,
Fair Welcome who takes revenge on me,
Cruel Love, an unnatural mother,
Hope which deprives me of joy,
poor help, burning desire,
sad thoughts, sighing heart,
Harshness, Disdain, Rebuff, and Refusal
have brought me to this, that for love I shall die.

So I wish that it be made known to my lady
that she changes my joy to grief,
and that her fair radiant face
destroys me, such misfortune do I feel,
and that I have neither pleasure nor song,
nor do I sing as I used to,
for Love, my eyes, and her genteel person
have brought me to this, that for love I shall die.

Translations by Scott Metcalfe, Thomas Forrest Kelly, and Lawrence Rosenwald.

credits

from A 14th​-​Century Salmagundi, released September 4, 2020

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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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