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

Dolze mie donna, grazios'e pia

ballata by Paolo da Firenze

Sources

Chicago: Private Library of Edward E. Lowinsky, Fragment, number 2 (3/1).

Facsimiles

Paolo Tenorista in a New Fragment of the Italian Ars Nova, A Facsimile Edition with an Introduction by Nino Pirrotta, Palm Springs: Gottlieb, 1961, plates a verso-b.

Editions

1. Paolo Tenorista in a New Fragment of the Italian Ars Nova, A Facsimile Edition with an Introduction by Nino Pirrotta, Palm Springs: Gottlieb, 1961, p. 72.
2. Italian Secular Music, edited by W. Thomas Marrocco, Monaco: Editions de L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1978. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century XI, p. 56.
3. 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. 286.

Literature

1. PIRROTTA, Nino. 'Paolo da Firenze in un nuovo frammento dell' Ars nova', Musica Disciplina, X (1956), pp. 62-63.
2. BAUMANN, Dorothea. 'Some extraordinary forms in the Italian secular Trecento repertoire', L'Ars nova italiana del Trecento IV: Certaldo 1975, 1978, pp. 45-63.
3. BAUMANN, Dorothea. Die dreistimmige italienische Lied-Satztechnik im Trecento, Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner, 1979. Sammlung musikwissenschaftlicher Abhandlung no. 64, passim.

Text

Dolze mie donna, grazios'e pia,
quando sarà che ma' più ti riveggia?

I' non sapre' ridir che pena sente
dentr'al mie cor di sì lunga dimora
se non a te, a cui null'è nascoso
che me ne fosse creduto niente
rispetto al foco che dentro divora.
Né di scoprirlo ad altri sare' oso
come e dove 'l mie pensier vagheggia
sempr'aspettando che quell'ora sia

Translation

Sweet lady of mine, full of grace and mercy,
when shall I ever see you again?

I could not tell, if not to you, from whom
nothing is hidden, how painful this long tarrying
feels to my heart: people would think it nothing
compared to the consuming fire within.
Nor would I dare to disclose it to others,
how I muse upon how and where we'll meet,
forever waiting for that time to come.
Text revision and translation © Giovanni Carsaniga