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Fors seullement l​’​actente que je meure

from Johannes Ockeghem Complete Songs Vol. 1 by Blue Heron

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    This disc comes in an attractive 4-panel wallet-style format, with a CD sleeve. There is no plastic tray, which makes for a greener (and more lightweight) package.

    Besides eleven songs by Johannes Ockeghem (c.1420-1497), this disc includes two related works: the anonymous “En atendant vostre venue” from the recently-discovered Leuven Chansonnier (probably copied c. 1475 in the Loire Valley, where Ockeghem lived and worked), whose text borrows the first line of Ockeghem’s "Quant de vous seul", and "Au travail suis" by the composer Barbingant, which quotes both text and music from the opening of Ockeghem’s "Ma maistresse".

    Ockeghem was one of the most celebrated musicians of the fifteenth century and is one of the greatest composers of all time, 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 the fifteenth century—rondeau, virelai, and ballade—to exquisitely crafted polyphony in which all voices are granted equally beautiful and compelling melodies.

    The CD booklet contains complete texts and translations and notes on the music and performance practice by Sean Gallagher (musicological adviser for "Ockeghem@600", Blue Heron’s project to perform the complete works of Johannes Ockeghem in a series of thirteen concert programs) and Blue Heron’s music director Scott Metcalfe.

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    Get all 13 Blue Heron releases available on Bandcamp and save 15%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Guillaume de Machaut: Remede de Fortune, A 14th-Century Salmagundi, Johannes Ockeghem Complete Songs Vol. 1, Cipriano de Rore: I madrigali a cinque voci, The Lost Music of Canterbury (Boxed Set), Anonymous: Missa sine nomine (Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, vol. 5), Christmas in Medieval England, Robert Jones: Missa Spes nostra (Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, vol. 4), and 5 more. , and , .

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lyrics

Fors seullement l’actente que je meure,
En mon las cueur nul espoir ne demeure,
Car mon malheur si tresfort me tourmente
Qu’il n’est doleur que par vous je ne sente,
Puis que je suis de vous perdre bien seure.

Vostre rigeur follement me court seure
Qu’en ce parti il fault que je m’asseure,
Dont je n’ay bien qui en rien me contente.

Fors seullement l’actente que je meure,
En mon las cueur nul espoir ne demeure,
Car mon malheur si tresfort me tourmente.

Mon desconfort toute seulle je pleure
En mauldisant sur ma foy a toute heure
Ma loyaulté qui tant me fait dolente.
Las! que je suis de vivre mal contente
Quant de par vous n’ay riens qui me sequeure.

Fors seullement l’actente que je meure …

Save only the expectation that I shall die,
no hope remains in my weary heart,
for my misery torments me so very bitterly
that there is no pain I do not feel on your account,
since I am quite sure of losing you.

Your pitilessness attacks me mercilessly,
so that in this situation I must rescue myself,
for I have nothing at all that comforts me.

Save only the expectation that I shall die,
no hope remains in my weary heart,
for my misery torments me so very bitterly.

All alone I weep for my distress,
ever cursing, by my faith,
my loyalty, which makes me suffer so.
Alas! how unhappy I am to remain alive
when from you I receive nothing to succor me.

Save only the expectation that I shall die …

Translation by Scott Metcalfe

credits

from Johannes Ockeghem Complete Songs Vol. 1, released November 1, 2019
Megan Chartrand, Martin Near and Sumner Thompson, voices

Engineering and mastering: Joel Gordon
Producer: Scott Metcalfe
Editing: Eric Milnes & Joel Gordon
Assistant Session Producers: Michael Barrett, Eric Milnes & Martin Near
Graphic Design: Melanie Germond
Cover photo: Young Woman with a Pink, c. 1485-90, attributed to Hans Memling (d. 1494, Bruges), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437059)
Recorded at Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill
September 29-October 2 & October 28-30, 2018

Music composed by Johannes Ockeghem (c.1420-1497). All songs edited from original sources by 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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