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Chant royal: Joye, plaisance, et douce nourreture (RF3)

from Guillaume de Machaut: Remede de Fortune by Blue Heron

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lyrics

Chant royal (RF3) Joye, plaisance, et douce nourreture

Joye, plaisance, et douce nourreture,
Vie d’onneur prennent maint en amer,
Et plusseurs sont qui n’i ont fors pointure,
Doulour, ardour, plour, tristesse, et amer.
Ce dient ; mais acorder
Ne me puis, qu’en la sousfrance
D’Amours ait nulle grevance,
Car tout ce qui vient de li
Plaist a cuer d’ami.

Car vraye Amour en cuer d’amant figure
Tres douce Espoir et gracieus Penser:
Espoir attrait Joie et Bonne Adventure,
Dous Penser fait Plaisance en cuer entrer,
Si ne doit plus demander
Cilz qui a Bonne Esperance,
Doulz Penser, Joye, et Plaisance,
Car qui plus requiert, je di
Qu’Amours l’a guerpi.

Dont cilz qui vit de si douce pasture
Vie d’onnour puet bien et doit mener,
Car de tous biens a a comble mesure,
Plus qu’autres cuers n’en saroit desirer,
Ne d’autre merci rouver
N’a desir, cuer, ne beance,
Pour ce qu’il a Souffisance;
Ne je ne scay nommer cy
Nulle autre merci.

Mais ceulz qui sont en tristresse, en ardure,
En plours, en plains, et en doulour sans cesser,
Et qui dient qu’Amours leur est si dure
Qu’il ne peuent sans morir plus durer,
Je ne puis ymaginer
Qu’il aiment sans decevance
Et qu’en euls trop ne s’avance
Desirs. Pour ce sont ainssi,
Qu’il l’ont deservi.

Qu’Amours, qui est de si noble nature
Qu’elle scet bien qui aimme sans fausser,
Scet bien paier as amans leur droiture :
C’est les loyaus de joye saouler
Et d’eaus faire savourer
Ses douçours en habondance,
Et les mauvais par sentence
Sont com traitres failli
De sa court bani.

Amours, je scay sans doubtance
Qu’a .c. doubles as meri
Ceuls qui t’ont servi.

Joy, pleasure, sweet sustenance,
and a life of honor: many find these in love,
but there are many others who find nothing but hurt,
sorrow, burning grief, tears, sadness, and bitterness.
Or so they say—but I cannot
agree, for in the sufferings
of Love there is no hurt,
for everything that comes from her
is pleasing to a lover’s heart.

For True Love in a lover’s heart creates
sweetest Hope and Gracious Thought:
Hope attracts Joy and Good Luck,
Sweet Thought makes Pleasure enter the heart,
and one should not ask for more
if he has Good Hope,
Sweet Thought, Joy, and Pleasure,
for if he seeks anything more, I say
that Love has abandoned him.

Therefore he who lives on such sweet food
can and should live a life of honor,
for he enjoys all blessings in full measure,
more than any heart could possibly desire,
nor does he have the desire, will, or longing
to seek further reward,
because he has Sufficiency,
nor could I name here
a better reward.

As for those who suffer sadness, distress,
weeping, moaning, and sorrow without cease,
and who say that Love is so hard towards them
that they can endure no more without dying,
I cannot imagine
that they love without deception
and that they are not overwhelmed by
Desire. That’s why they feel that way,
and they deserve it.

For Love, who is of such noble nature
that she knows well who loves without duplicity,
knows just how to pay lovers their due:
she sates the loyal with joy
and allows them to savor
her sweetnesses in abundance,
while the wicked are sentenced
like perfidious traitors
to banishment from her court.

Love, I know without doubt
that you have rewarded twice a hundred times over
those who have served you.

[English Translation © Scott Metcalfe. Unauthorized reprinting strictly prohibited.]

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from Guillaume de Machaut: Remede de Fortune, released October 21, 2022

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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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