At Kingdom Twelfth Night, I presented my setting of Bertrand de Born as "singable English." Alas, it is, but not very singable. There are some weird stresses and phrases.
Verse 1 is fine.
Verse 2 is... almost fine. "And O! how my spirits adore" is currently set so that the stress is on "And", not "O!," which is where I keep wanting to put it. Eh... it almost doesn't matter. Shifting things so that the stress is on "O!" gets you spiRITS instead of SPIrits later, but it's not violently wrong-sounding. I should pick a way and go with it.
Verse 3's ending is bad. "For a soldier is soon forsaken / Unless he's given many blows and taken." Eh? Taken? You'd want to avoid that, right? So...
"For a solider will be food for the crows / Unless he's given many blows"
Verse 4 is okay, and a good place to stop. I like how Verse 5 opens, but the rest of it... I can leave it.
Comments