Mi Contra Fa

AOI

In "The Song of Roland," after many (but not all) of the laisses, there comes a puzzling marking: AOI. I've seen it explained in several ways, out there on the Internets:

1. An exclamation like the joyful medieval "Eya!", although (given the number of different emotional contexts it occurs in) I would think it would have to be something like our modern "Oh!" which takes on many meanings depending on inflection.
2. A mistaken writing of "Am", short for "Amen." 
3. A notional relating to music.
4. A notation relating to performance (e.g., perform only the AOI laisses for a slightly shorter performance).
5. An exhortation to the audience to "Listen!"
6. A copyist's mark noting which laisses came from a version considered canonical by the copyist, and which came from other versions.

I have one more possibility to add.

If you sing "AOI" as "aou-EEE," on a rising fifth, it sounds very much like a horn.  You know, like the most famous medieval fictional horn, which features exactly in this chanson.

I think this ranks as more plausible than someone mis-spelling "Amen" dozens of times, but not as plausible as a copyist's or performer's notation. 

Roland for BotB

The theme for Battle on the Bay 2015 is "Normans," so I started poking around for a good verse translation of "The Song of Roland."  My copy from college is nice, and even poetic, but the poetry is free verse-like.

The first one I came across was this new translation, which comes in "normal edition" and "performance edition" - with the text broken up by speaker, for multi-person staging.  I looked at the Kindle previews and it seemed okay.  But in the course of looking for some reviews of it, I came across a mention of the poetic edition that preceded it.

Dorothy Sayers, it turns out, before inventing Lord Peter Whimsey, had an advanced degree in Old French.  And her verse translation of "The Song of Roland" is the Penguin Classics edition!  Some reviewer dinged it for the archaic terms she uses on occasion.  Now, I don't have any problem with "bliaut," but I admit that using "County" instead of "Count" (e.g., County Roland) threw me.  But you know what? That's readily fixed by changing "County" back to "Count."  It may throw off the syllable count of the line, but since there's no fixed meter, the audience will never know.

I've taken laisses 128 - 138 and edited them way down, to about 780 words.  (My 10-min "Beowulf" is 830 words, so this should be a reasonable length. We'll see how it goes as I rehearse it.)  "Roland" uses a lot of repetition as an emphasis device, so I cut a good deal of that out (but not all of it).  I edited out other references that didn't seem critical to get the word count down.

This part of the text is toward the end of the great battle, when all but 60 knights of France have fallen.  Roland asks Oliver how they can possibly inform Charlemagne of what's going on, and Oliver tells him off. (At the start of the battle, Oliver had suggested they signal the king, and now it's too late).  Archbishop Turpin reconciles them, and Roland blows Oliphant three times.  Each time, we cut away to Charlemagne, who hears it, but treacherous Ganelon downplays it.  Finally, another advisor tells Ganelon to cut the crap, and Charlemagne's troop (in a really scenic set of laisses) turns around and heads back - but they will not come in time! 

I am thinking harp accompaniment for this one - more appropriate for Norman era than the lyre.  A vielle would be the best, but I don't do bowed strings.  Maybe I'll try a tune to sing it to.  Something to work on at Pennsic!

Bertran de Born Podcast

From the grey mists of time, Bertran de Born's "Be'm plai lo gais de pascor" emerges!  You've seen the documentation and possible struggled with the poorly-notated sheet music (PDF)!  Now hear the song!

Gah, I never realized how bad I am at aligning words and notes until I went back and tried to sing this from the page.

More good news - my computer records again!  Granted, I'm using a gaming headset to sing into, which results in some static if I'm too loud (which I frequently am).  But!  Now I can record audio more often.  Upgrading mic can be a future project.

Back to Bertrand de Born

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.

GTP: Shining Spring V

Alternate first verse?

It is the shining time of spring, eya!
With flowers bright and birds on wing, eya!
And jealous husbands trouble bring, eya!
So now our queen would like to sing
To say and to tell that she is full of love

Hm....  I will think about it, but this one is 1) prettier and 2) foreshadows what 'action' the song has rather nicely.

GTP: Shining Spring IV

Shining spring is never late, eya!
Bringing joy to low and great, eya!
And jealous husbands irritate, eya!
Now our queen would like to state
To sing and to say that she is full of love

Go away, go away, jealous ones!
Leave us be, let us be
We shall all dance, together in the sun!

She has proclaimed it everywhere, eya!
On land and sea and in the air, eya!
That every youth and maiden fair, eya!
All should dance without a care
All should come with joy, should come and dance with us

Go away, go away, jealous ones!...

The King is coming with his lance, eya!
He says that he will stop our dance, eya!
He doesn't want to take the chance, eya!
That his Queen will find romance
That someone will steal his April Queen away

Go away, go away, jealous ones!...

Well, she doesn't like his plan, eya!
She doesn't want an older man, eya!
You know she wants a man who can, eya!
A man who knows so much more than
Only how to couch his lance and then to thrust

Go away, go away, jealous ones!...

If you saw our lady dance, eya!
Gracefully she does advance, eya!
With just but a single glance, eya!
You would know there is no chance
That there is a peer to our fair queen of joy

Go away, go away, jealous ones!...

_____________________________

"Go away" is just more fun to sing that "To the road."  "Hit the road" is too modern.

I ditched the end-rhymes for the last lines.  This version is just more singable.  Now to just practice it a bit to make sure that it flows...

GTP: Shining Spring III

As it turns out, Vladislav's page has mp3 and midi files, so I just listened to his version of the song.  It is indeed different from the two recorded versions I've heard.  (In addition to the Skye Consort, I first heard the song on this CD, by the Folger Consort, whose research is not to be sneezed at.)

Hrm... Skye Consort, on their YouTube page says:

A song in old French. There are lots of versions of this one and there is dispute about the transposition of the chorus but we weren't trying to be historically accurate, just playing a good tune....

So that might explain some of the variants.  I think the trouble is mostly the chorus, and especially the last line.  Poking around at Amazon, I found the Martin Best Ensemble's version which sounds like it has an awful lot of notes for that last "ballar entre nos, entre nos."

...oh wait, maybe they really do mean "transposition," not "transcription."  Here's another version and the chorus is definitely transposed. 

Go away, go away, jealous ones / To the road, to the road, jealous ones
Leave us be, let us be
We shall all dance, together in the sun

(There. Now at least 'sun' and 'ones' approximately rhyme.)

Speaking of rhymes... I'm waffling on changing the last lines of each verse.  As it stands now, they're meant to approximately rhyme with each other.  Which results in:

To sing and to tell that she is amorous

Not bad, and close to the original, but "that she is full of love" sounds more natural.

That someone will steal, his April Queen possess

This is my least favorite line in the whole translation, because of the sucky grammar.  "Steal" doesn't have an object, and so the idea of repetition doesn't quite work.  I can either do the folk song thing and subdivide something to squeeze in an object:

That someone will steal her, his April Queen possess

Now the second half of the line repeats the first half.  Or forget the rhyme:

That someone will steal his April Queen away

And then, oh yeah:

That there is no peer to our fair Queen Joyeuse

It's not her name, and she's not the queen of Joyeuse, France.  I'm given to understand the word means "joyful" in French; I learned it as the name of Lancelot's castle, Joyeuse Gard.  And it vaguely rhymes with "us" as "joyful queen" or "queen of joy" does not.

I am tending to think that the audience is not going to pick up on semi-approximate rhymes separated by an entire verse-refrain structure in a way that's anywhere near as important as having the words make sense to them.  But-but-but the proper form...

GTP: Shining Spring II

Chorus:
Go away, go away, jealous ones / To the road, to the road, jealous ones
Leave us be, let us be
We shall all dance, all dance most joyfully

Last verse:
If you saw our lady dance, eya!
Gracefully she does advance, eya!
With just but a single glance, eya!
You would know there is no chance
That there is no peer to our fair Queen Joyeuse

Some further resources:
Skye Consort performance of original
Sheet music (link down the bottom, page 2)

Now, I'm bad at sight-reading, but listening to the Skye Consort and looking at Vladislav the Purple's score, they don't seem to match.  Maybe it's because they sing faster than I can follow.

What I need to do:
1) Play the sheet music to see if it tallies with the tune in my head

2) Listen to the early music CD I have with this on it, and see if that tallies with the tune in my head (I may have learned it wrongly; I have a hard time getting this one, for some reason. Maybe the melismas.)

3) Make sure my translation can be sung.  It works to the tune in my head, and the verses at least can be fit under the notes in the score (although not the way they sound in my head)

4) Go back and make corrections as needed.

GTP: Less work for me!

Douce dame jolie is one of those super-mega medieval hits.  It gets recorded a lot.  And now it's in English!

Master Efenwealt Wystle has it on his latest release, Songs from the Sock Drawer.  The liner notes say that the transliteration is by Anne Lister, who may be this folk singer.  The song is available for download (just 99 cents!) at Master Efenwealt's MySpace page.  (Scroll down til you see the black box in the right column.)

I don't see the transliteration available on the Internet anywhere, and I'm not going to transcribe it from the CD.  It's worth your 99 cents to learn a singable version.  But if you want to hear the tune, we can go to YouTube and find:

A very slow and lyric version with spiffy harping.

This unaccompanied one picks up the pace.

Hey, an English version.  I haven't listened to the Lister/Wystle version enough to know if this is the same translation or not!

GTP: Shining Spring

Finally, work on A l'entrada de tens clar!

Verses so far:
Shining spring is never late, eya!
Bringing joy to low and great, eya!
And jealous husbands irritate, eya!
Now our queen would like to state
To sing and to tell that she is amorous

She has proclaimed it everywhere, eya!
On land and sea and in the air, eya!
That every youth and maiden fair, eya!
All should dance without a care
All should come with joy, should come and dance with us

The King is coming with his lance, eya!
He says that he will stop our dance, eya!
He doesn't want to take the chance, eya!
That his Queen will find romance
That someone will steal, his April Queen possess

Well, she doesn't like his plan, eya!
She doesn't want an older man, eya!
You know she wants a man who can, eya!
A man who knows much more than
Only how to couch his lance and then to thrust

(Last verse TBD)

Part of refrain:
Go away, go away, jealous ones
Leave us be, let us be
--------------- (I need to study the melody)

I saw an interesting translation online that, instead of "go away" was "hit the road."  I assumed "via" was some French version of the Spanish "ir," "to go," which gets conjugated into forms like "voy, vas, va."  But it does look an awful lot like Latin "Via," road, too!  It could literally be "To the road, to the road, jealous ones!"