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Complainte: Tieus rit au main qui au soir pleure (RF2)

from Guillaume de Machaut: Remede de Fortune by Blue Heron

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lyrics

Complainte (RF2) Tieus rit au main qui au soir pleure

1
Tieus rit au main qui au soir pleure,
Et tieus cuide qu’Amours labeure
Pour son bien, qu’elle li court seure
Et mal l’atourne ;
Et tieus cuide que Joie acqueure
Pour li aidier, qu’elle demeure.
Car Fortune tout ce deveure,
Quant elle tourne,
Qui n’atent mie qu’il ajourne
Pour tourner ; qu’elle ne sejourne,
Ains tourne, retourne et bestorne,
Tant qu’au desseure
Met celui qui gist mas en l’ourne,
Le seurmonté au bas retourne,
Et le plus joieus mat et mourne
Fait en po d’eure.

2
Car elle n’est ferme n’estable,
Juste, loyal, ne veritable ;
Quant on la cuide charitable,
Elle est avere,
Dure, diverse, espouentable,
Traitre, poignant, decevable ;
Et quant on la cuide amiable,
Lors est amere.
Car ja soit ce qu’amie appere,
Douce com miel, vraie com mere,
La pointure d’une vipere
Qu’est incurable
En riens a li ne se compere,
Car elle trairoit son pere
Et mettroit d’onneur en misere
Deraisonnable.

15
Fortune est amour haineuse,
Bonneurté maleureuse,
C’est largesse avaricieuse,
C’est orphenté,
C’est santé tristre et doulereuse,
C’est richesce la souffraiteuse,
C’est noblesse povre et honteuse
Sans loyauté ;
C’est l’orguilleuse humilité,
C’est l’envieuse charité,
C’est perilleuse seurté,
Trop est douteuse ;
C’est puissance en mandicité,
C’est repos en adversité,
C’est famine en cuer saoulé,
C’est joie ireuse.

19
Einsi m’a fait, ce m’est avis,
Fortune que ci vous devis,
Car je souloie estre assevis
De toute joye,
Or m’a d’un seul tour si bas mis
Qu’en grief plour est mué mon ris,
Et que tous li biens est remis
Qu’avoir souloie,
Car la belle ou mes cuers s’ottroie,
Que tant aim que plus ne porroie,
Maintenant veoir n’oseroie
En mi le vis.
Et se desir tant que la voie
Que mes dolens cuers s’en desvoie,
Pour ce ne scay que faire doye,
Tant sui despris.

1
He who laughs in the morning weeps in the evening,
and he believes that Love labors
on his behalf, while she persecutes
and betrays him;
he imagines Joy rushing
to his aid, while she dawdles.
For Fortune destroys everything
when she turns her wheel,
and she doesn’t wait for daybreak
before turning: she doesn’t pause,
but turns, turns again, and turns it all the way around
until she brings to the top
the one who was lying flat in the gutter,
returns the exalted one to the bottom,
and makes the happiest person sad and gloomy
in no time at all.

2
For she’s neither constant, stable,
just, loyal, nor true;
when you think she’s charitable,
she’s stingy,
hard, fickle, frightening,
traitorous, piercing, deceitful;
and when you imagine she’s friendly,
then she’s bitter.
For although she appears to be a friend—
sweet as honey, true as a mother—
a viper’s bite,
which is incurable,
is nothing compared to her,
for she would betray her father
and topple him from honor
into unspeakable misery.

15
Fortune is hateful love,
unhappy happiness,
she’s greedy generosity,
she’s misery,
she’s sad and suffering health,
she’s miserly wealth,
she’s poor and shameful nobility
without loyalty;
she’s haughty humility,
she’s envious charity,
she’s perilous security,
much to be doubted;
she’s penniless power,
she’s resting in adversity,
she’s famine in a sated heart,
she’s doleful joy.

19
This is how I’ve been treated, I believe,
by Fortune, whom I’ve described to you here,
for I used to be full
of every joy,
but now with a single turn she’s brought me so low
that my laughter has turned to bitter tears
and everything good I once had
has been swept away,
for the beauty to whom I have given my heart,
and whom I could not love more—
now I wouldn’t dare to look her
in the face.
Yet I so much desire to see her
that my grieving heart is going mad,
so that I don’t know what I ought to do,
I’m so forlorn.

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

credits

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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