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Musica son​/​Già furon​/​Ciascun vuole

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

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lyrics

Musica son che mi dolgo piangendo
Veder gli effecti mie dolce perfecti
Lasciar per frottol i vagh’intellecti.
Perche ingnorança e viçi’ogn’uom costuma,
Lasciasi ’l buon e pigliasi la schiuma.

Già furon le dolceçe mie pregiate
Da chavalier, baroni et gran singnori,
Or sono’n bastarditi e genti cori.
Ma io musica sol non mi lamento
Ch’ancor l’altre virtù lasciare sento.

Ciascun vuole narrar musical note
Et compor madrial, caccie, ballate,
Tenend’ognum le sue autenticate.
Chi vuol d’una virtù venire in loda
Conviengli prima giugner alla proda.


Translation:

Music am I, who, weeping, grieve
to see my sweet, perfect workings
abandoned in favor of country songs by amorous minds.
Because ignorance is a vice common to all men,
the good is cast aside and froth seized upon.

Heretofore were my sweet effects esteemed
by knights, barons, and great lords;
now they are bastardized and sung by crowds.
But I, Music, do not lament alone,
because I perceive that the other virtues are also abandoned.

Everyone wants to dictate musical notes
and compose madrigals, caccias, and ballatas,
each sticking to his own rules.
He who wishes to be praised for a virtue
ought first to step up into the prow.

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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