We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Ma maistresse et ma plus grant amye

from Johannes Ockeghem Complete Songs Vol. 1 by Blue Heron

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $1 USD  or more

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    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.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Johannes Ockeghem Complete Songs Vol. 1 via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ... more
    ships out within 3 days

      $20 USD or more 

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    Purchasable with gift card

      $134.70 USD or more (15% OFF)

     

lyrics

Ma maistresse et ma plus grant amye,
De mon desir la mortelle ennemye,
Parfaicte en biens s’onques maiz le fut femme,
Celle seulle de qui court bruit et fame
D’estre sans per: ne vous verray je mye?

Helas, de vous bien plaindre me devroie,
S’il ne vous plaist que brefvement vous voye,
M’amour, par qui d’aultre aymer n’ay puissance.

Car sans vous voir, en quelque part que soye,
Tout ce que voys me desplaist et ennoye,
Ne jusque alors je n’auray souffisance.

Incessammant mon dolent cueur larmye
Doubtant qu’en vous Pitié soit endormye.
Que ja ne soit, ma tant amée dame!
Maiz s’ainsy est, si malheureux me clame
Que plus ne quiers vivre heure ne demye.

Ma maistresse et ma plus grant amye …

My mistress and my greatest friend,
mortal enemy of my desire,
perfect in good qualities, if ever a woman was,
she alone whom repute and fame hold
to be without peer: will I never see you ever?

Alas! I should rightly complain of you
if it does not please you that I see you shortly,
my love, because of whom I am powerless to love another.

For when I do not see you, wherever I might be,
everything I see displeases and vexes me,
nor until I see you will I be satisfied.

Ceaselessly my sorrowing heart weeps,
fearing that in you Pity lies asleep.
May it not be so, my so-beloved lady!
But if so it is, I declare myself so unhappy
that I do not want to live one hour more, nor even one half.

My mistress and my greatest friend …

Translation by Scott Metcalfe

credits

from Johannes Ockeghem Complete Songs Vol. 1, released November 1, 2019
Martin Near, Jason McStoots 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.

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

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

contact / help

Contact Blue Heron

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this track or account

If you like Blue Heron, you may also like: