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En attendant, Esperance conforte

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

/

lyrics

En attendant, Esperance conforte
L’omme qui vuolt avoir perfeccion:
En attendant se deduc et deporte,
En attendant li proumet guerredon,
En attendant passe temps et sayson,
En attendant met en li sa fiance:
De toulz ces mets est servis a fayson
Cilz qui ne sceit vivre sans Esperance.

Esperance tient overte la porte
Adont chascuns puet avoir guarison.
Esperance est de si noble sorte
Que cilz ne doit prendre confusion
Qui l’a o soy, et sanz li ne puet on
Avoir loing temps de playsir habundance:
Dont prendre assés puet consolacion
Cilz qui ne sceit vivre sans Esperance.

Pour ce conoy et voy qu’elle m’ennorte
A li tenir, et j’ay cause et rayson,
Quar ja schay bien que s’elle estoit morte
Pou y veroit le mien entencion.
Dont je vos pris en ma conclusion
Que Bel Acueil priés pour m’alagance:
En attendant suy [sanz] presoncion
Cilz qui ne sceit vivre sans Esperance.


Translation:

While waiting, Hope comforts
the man who seeks perfection:
while waiting, he amuses and entertains himself,
while waiting, she promises him reward,
while waiting, time and seasons pass,
while waiting, he places his trust in her.
From all these dishes is amply served
the man who cannot live without Hope.

Hope holds open the door
through which each may find healing.
Hope is of such noble make
that he who has her with him
should never come to harm, and without her
one cannot long enjoy pleasure’s abundance:
from which he can take some consolation,
the man who cannot live without Hope.

Therefore I acknowledge and see that she exhorts me
to hold to her, and I have cause and reason,
for I know well that if she were dead
my intent would come to little.
Thus, in conclusion, I beg you
to pray to Fair Welcome for my relief:
while waiting I am, without presumption,
the man who cannot live without Hope.

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

credits

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

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all rights reserved

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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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