Songs
Plourés, dames, ploures vostre servant (Ballade: from ‘Le Voir Dit’)
Plourés, dames, ploures vostre servant (Ballade: from ‘Le Voir Dit’)
Plourés dames, plourez vostre servant,Qui ay toudis mis mon cuer et m’entente,Corps et desir et penser en servantL’onneur de vous, que Diex gart et augmente.Vestés vous de noir pour miCar j’ay cuer, taint et viaire pali,Et si me voy de mort en aventureSe Diex et vous ne me prenez en cure.Mais certeins sui qu’en vous de bien a tantQue dou peril ou je sui sans attenteMe geterez, se cuer en plourant,Priez a dieu qu’a moy garir s’assente.Et pour ce je vous depriQu’a Dieu vueilliez pour moy faire depri;Ou paier criens le treu de Nature,Se Diex et vous ne me prenez en cure.
Weep ladies, weep for your servant
Weep ladies, weep for your servant,I who has every day spent my heart and energy,Body and desire and mind in servingYour honour, which may God preserve and exalt.Dress in black for meBecause my heart’s afflicted, my face pale,And I see myself in danger of deathIf God and you don’t attend to me.But I’m certain you’ve enough goodnessTo save me from this perilWhere I lie hopeless, if weeping you prayFrom the heart that God agrees to my cure,And so I beg youPray God for my sake;Else I fear paying Nature’s debtIf God and you don’t attend to me.
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Composer
Guillaume de Machaut is presumed to have been born around the year 1300; the first surviving documentary evidence from 1330 lists him as a ‘clerk’ in the household of John of Bohemia and suggests that he had been in service since 1323. Machaut was instated as a canon of Reims Cathedral in 1337 and established a residence in the city in 1340. During his later years he enjoyed the patronage of a number of French nobles, including the wife and son of Jean II. In his sixties he enjoyed a close relationship with a young noblewoman, a relationship he chronicled (and embellished) in a long narrative poem, Le Voir Dit, which included many of their lyrics and letters. From these we learn something of his view of his own music, and of the process by which he preserved his work for posterity. His poetry also supplies a limited degree of biographical information; he suffered from gout and was blind in one eye, yet he was evidently enthusiastic about falconry, horseback riding and the French countryside. Machaut died in Reims in 1377.
© Daniel Leech-Wilkinson
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Previously performed at:
Plourés, dames, ploures vostre servant (Ballade: from ‘Le Voir Dit’)
Weep ladies, weep for your servant
If you would like to use our texts and translations, please click here for more information.
Composer
Guillaume de Machaut is presumed to have been born around the year 1300; the first surviving documentary evidence from 1330 lists him as a ‘clerk’ in the household of John of Bohemia and suggests that he had been in service since 1323. Machaut was instated as a canon of Reims Cathedral in 1337 and established a residence in the city in 1340. During his later years he enjoyed the patronage of a number of French nobles, including the wife and son of Jean II. In his sixties he enjoyed a close relationship with a young noblewoman, a relationship he chronicled (and embellished) in a long narrative poem, Le Voir Dit, which included many of their lyrics and letters. From these we learn something of his view of his own music, and of the process by which he preserved his work for posterity. His poetry also supplies a limited degree of biographical information; he suffered from gout and was blind in one eye, yet he was evidently enthusiastic about falconry, horseback riding and the French countryside. Machaut died in Reims in 1377.
© Daniel Leech-Wilkinson
See Full Entry
Sorry, no further description available.