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Motet: Qui es promesses de Fortune / Ha Fortune / Et non est qui adjuvet (M8)

from Guillaume de Machaut: Remede de Fortune by Blue Heron

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lyrics

Motet (M8) Qui es promesses de Fortune / Ha Fortune / Et non est qui adjuvet

TRIPLUM
Qui es promesses de Fortune se fie
Et es richesse de ses dons s’asseure,
Ou cils qui croit qu’elle soit tant s’amie
Que pour li soit en riens ferme ou seure,
Il est trop fols, car elle est non seure,
Sans foy, sans loy, sans droit et sans mesure :
C’est fiens couvers de riche couverture,
Qui dehors luist et dedens est ordure.
Une ydole est de fausse pourtraiture,
Ou nuls ne doit croire ne mettre cure ;
Sa convenance en vertu pas ne dure,
Car c’est tous vens, ne riens qu’elle figure
Ne puet estre fors de fausse figure ;
Et li siens sont toudis en aventure
De trebuchier, car, par droite nature,
La desloyal renoie, parjure,
Fausse, traitre, perverse et mere sure
Oint et puis point de si mortel pointure
Que ceaus qui sont fait de sa norriture
En traison met a desconfiture.

MOTETUS
Ha! Fortune, trop sui mis loing de port,
Quant en la mer m’as mis sans aviron
En un batel petit, plat et sans bort,
Foible, pourri, sans voile, et environ
Sont tuit li vent contraire pour ma mort,
Si qu’il n’i a confort ne garison,
Merci n’espoir, ne d’eschaper ressort,
Ne riens de bien pour moy, car sans raison
Je voy venir la mort amere a tort
Preste de moy mettre a destruction ;
Mais celle mort reçoy je par ton sort,
Fausse Fortune, et par ta traison.

TENOR
Et non est qui adjuvet.

TRIPLUM
He who trusts in Fortune’s promises
and feels assured of her rich gifts,
or he who believes that she is so much his friend
that for him she is constant or certain in anything
is a great fool, for she is unreliable,
faithless, lawless, without justice or measure:
she’s feces draped in a rich covering,
gleaming on the outside and filth within.
An idol is she, a false portrait,
in whom none should believe or place his trust;
her covenant has no lasting force,
for it is all wind, and nothing she creates
can be anything but a forgery;
and her friends are always at risk
of stumbling, for, true to her nature,
the disloyal apostate, perjurer,
false, traitorous, perverse and bitter mother
flatters and then pierces with such a mortal puncture
that those raised on her nourishment
are betrayed and routed.

MOTETUS
Ah! Fortune, I have been carried too far from port,
since you sent me to sea without an oar,
in a tiny boat, flat and without rudder,
weak, rotten, without sail; and all around
the winds blow against me, seeking my death,
so that there is no comfort or defense,
no hope of mercy, no route of escape,
nor anything good for me, for without cause
I see bitter death approach, wrongfully
ready to send me to my destruction;
but I meet this death through your doing,
false Fortune, and through your treachery.

TENOR
And there is none who might help.

[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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