Songs
Se pour ce muir qu’amours ay bien servi (Ballade: from 'Le Voir Dit')
Se pour ce muir qu’amours ay bien servi (Ballade: from 'Le Voir Dit')
Se pour ce muir qu’Amours ay bien servi,Y fait mauvais servir si fait signourCar je n’ay pas mort d’Amours desserviPour bien amer de tres loyal amour.Mais je croy bien que fine sont mi jourQuant je congnoy et voy tout en appertQu’en lieu de bleu, dame, vous vestes vert.Pour ce maudi les yex dont je vous vi,L’eure, le jour, et le tres cointe atourEt la biauté qui ont mon cuer ravi,Et le plaisir enivré de folour.Et si maudi Fortune et son faus tourEt Loyauté que sueffre et a souffert,Qu’en lieu de bleu, dame, vous vestez vert.
If I die because I served Love well
If I die because I served Love well,To serve such a lord is bad luckSince death I’ve not deserved from LoveFor loving her with a faithful affection.But I see well my days are numberedWhen I recognize and readily perceiveThat instead of blue, lady, it’s green you wear.And so I curse the eyes I saw you with,The hour, the day, the quite appealing displayAnd beauty that have ravished my heart,Also the pleasure drunk with folly.So I curse Fortune and her faithless turningAs well as Loyalty, who suffers and has suffered,That instead of blue, lady, it’s green you wear.
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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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Se pour ce muir qu’amours ay bien servi (Ballade: from 'Le Voir Dit')
If I die because I served Love well
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.
Previously performed at:
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