La Trobe University - Library: Medieval Music Database - Annual cycle of feasts of liturgical chant, liturgical polyphony and secular music of the late middle ages.

Perch'i' non sepi passar ch'a 'n tal varcho

ballata by Paolo da Firenze

Sources

Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds nouv. acq. français 6771 (Reina Codex), fol. 25 (3/1).

Editions

1. Italian Secular Music: Bartolino da Padova, Egidius de Francia, Giulielmus de Francia, Don Paolo da Firenze, edited by W. Thomas Marrocco, Monaco: Editions de L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1975. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century IX, p. 158.
2. The Music of Fourteenth-Century Italy, edited by Nino Pirrotta and Ursula Günther, Rome: American Institute of Musicology. Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 8/VI. [forthcoming]

Text Editions

CORSI, Giuseppe. Poesie musicali del Trecento, Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1970, p. 285.

Recordings

[Landini], Hortus Musicus, directed by Andres Moustonen: Chant du Monde LDX 78.666 (FRA).

Text

Perch'i' non sepi passar ch'a un tal varco
dov'Amor tende l'arco,
lasso! sento quanto 'l suo stral martira.

Non dico "lasso" sol perch'i' duol senta,
ma perché l'arc'alenta
verso l'oggett'ond'entras'al core

Translation

As I could only go through such a passage
where Love lies in wait with his bow,
alas! I now feel how much his arrow torments me.

I do not say "alas!" only because I feel pain,
but because the bow slackens
towards the target whose heart its arrow pierced.
Text revision and translation © Giovanni Carsaniga