minstrel: Troubadour and Trouvere songs in English

[Janet Parish-Whittaker]

Message text written by Holly
>>the singers perform in English because we find that while something is
>inevitably lost in any translation, more is lost - perhaps the whole song
-
>when an English-speaking audience is confronted with Old Occitan and Old
>French"  (Fletcher Collins - Early Music America, Spring 2002, p.52)

Aaaah!  Aaaaah!   Pardon my excitement, but this is so much my 
philosophy!  I feel so vindicated!  Whee!
<

Hi Holly!

Lord knows that the "do we perform in the original lingo?" debate has been
going on since day one of early music-  still, from the viewpoint of the
re-enactment scene, I think that the emphasis must fall fairly heavily on
translated text.  After all, Mistress Linette, have you ever spent an event
conversing solely in period French?  

I've been listening lately to a Hillier/Lawrence-King CD, Bitter Ballads
which explores some of the same issues.  Rather than just use translations
of the original song, Hillier liberally contrafacts his way through the
whole thing, fitting in whatever poetry he felt would have emotional impact
on the modern listener.  For example, the Ventadorn "Can vei la lauzeta
mover" supplies the music for a Brecht poem about infanticide. 

The argument is that to understand the presentation of troubadour music, we
should be hearing words that impact us in the same manner that the original
words impacted the medieval listener.  If we meet this condition, we might
find ourselves focusing more on the words of the music, and less on
elaborate instrumental arrangements (that said, King does some wonderful
early harp work on that CD).  

Has anyone out there tried anything similar, and if so, how did the
audience react?

-David Parish-Whittaker
Solana Beach, CA
www.thegoliards.com