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Motet: Trop plus est bele que Biauté / Biauté par​é​e de valour / Je ne sui mie certeins (M20)

from Guillaume de Machaut: Remede de Fortune by Blue Heron

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lyrics

Motet (M20) Trop plus est bele que biauté / Biauté parée de valour / Je ne sui mie certeins

TRIPLUM
Trop plus est bele que Biauté
Et millour que ne soit Bonté,
Pleinne de tout ce, a dire voir,
Que bonne et belle doit avoir,
Ce m’est vis, celle que desir
Et aim sans nul vilain desir.
Dont se je l’aim, et je qu’en puis,
Quant en sa fine biauté truis
De tous mes maus la garison,
Leesse, confort, guerredon,
Et secours de tous les meschiés
Dont par desir sui entichiés,
Comment qu’elle n’en sache rien ;
Car toute la joie et le bien
Que j’ay de sa grace me vient,
Sans plus, quant de li me souvient,
N’autre bonté de li n’enport.
Si pri Amours qu’en tel acort
Soit, pour ce que miex l’aim que mi,
Qu’elle me teingne pour ami.
Amen.

MOTETUS
Biauté parée de valour,
Desirs qui onques n’a sejour
D’acroistre, eins croist de jour en jour
En plaisance et en douce ardour,
Dous Regars pris par grant savour,
Tous pleins de promesse d’amour,
D’espoir, de joie, de tenrour
Et de pointure de douçour,
Font que j’aim des dames la flour.
Or me doint Diex grace et vigour
Qu’au gré d’Amours et a s’onnour
La puisse servir sans folour.
Amen.

TENOR
Je ne sui mie certeins d’avoir amie,
Mais je suis loyaus amis.

TRIPLUM
Far more beautiful than Beauty itself is she,
better than Goodness,
and full of everything, in truth,
that a good and beautiful lady should have,
it seems to me, she whom I desire
and love without any base desire.
Therefore I love her, and cannot do otherwise,
since in her pure beauty I find
a cure for all my ills,
happiness, comfort, reward,
and help for all the misfortunes
that afflict me through desire—
although she knows nothing of this!
For all the joy and good
which I have comes to me from her grace,
and nothing else, when I remember her,
and I take no other good from her.
And so I pray to Love to grant
that, because I love her better than myself,
she take me for her friend.
Amen.

MOTETUS
Beauty adorned with merit;
Desire which never ceases
to increase, but grows from day to day
in pleasure and sweet ardor;
Sweet Glance, greatly savored;
all filled with the promise of love,
hope, joy, tenderness,
and the sting of sweetness—
these make me love the flower of ladies.
Now may God grant me grace and strength
that, as Love wills and to her honor,
I may serve her without fault.
Amen.

TENOR
I am not at all sure of having a lover,
but I am a loyal friend.

[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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