minstrel: Troubadour and Trouvere songs in English

[Don Parrish-Bell]

As a "newbie" to the world of barding, and not having enough time to learn all sorts of
ancient and current languages before being able to have the fun of attending bard
circles, I would love to get more material in English.  I can certainly understand the
desire to want to keep the re-enactment as close as is practical to the period, but at
the same time having the ability to join in the fun as soon as possible seems to be just
as noble of a cause.

Don Parrish-Bell

Janet Parish-Whittaker wrote:

> 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
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