Helas! pitié envers moy dort si fort
ballade by Trebor
Sources
Chantilly: Bibliothèque du Musèe Condè 564, fol. 42 (3/1).
Editions
1. French Secular Music of the Late Fourteenth Century, edited by Willi Apel, Cambridge/Massachusetts: Medieval Academy of America, 1950, no. 42.
2. French Secular Compositions of the Fourteenth Century, music edited by Willi Apel, texts
edited by Samuel N. Rosenberg, Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1970. Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 53/I, p. 210.
3. French Secular Music. Manuscript Chantilly, Musèe Condè 564, Second Part, edited by Gordon K. Greene,
Monaco: Editions de L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1982. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century XIX, p. 46.
Literature
1. GOMEZ, Maria del Carmen. El Ars Nova en la Corona de Arag¢n o la M£sica en la Casa Real Catalana-Aragonese Durante los Anos 1336-1432, Barcelona: Antoni Bosch, [1977]. Historia y Documentos I, Musica II.
2. HOPPIN, Richard H.
Medieval Music, New York: W. W. Norton, 1978, pp. 477-478.
3. BROWN, Howard Mayer. 'A ballade for Mathieu de Foix: style and structure in a composition by Trebor', Musica Disciplina, XLI (1987), pp. 85-86.
Recordings
The Art of Courtly Love. Vol. I. Guillaume Machaut and His Age [Contemporaries], Early Music Consort of London, directed by David Munrow (1973): HMV SLS 863(3) (GB).
Text
Helas! pitié envers moy dort si fort
que je ne sçay se je sui mort ou vis.
Dangier, Refus, Desdaing sont d'un acort,
encontre moy pour me grever toutdis.
Se je me plain, je n'ay pas trop mespris,
quant por fenir m'est
rendu tel guerdon,
dont mort me voy sanz nulle mesprison.
Et puis qu'ainsi ne truis en riens confort,
Joie, soulas se sont de moy partis
et m'ont guerpy, dont j'en rechoy la mort
sans que jamais en aie nuls respis.
Je ne vis
pas, ainsois pene et languis.
Or n'est nul ben qu'en moy prengne seson,
dont mort me voy [sanz nulle mesprison.
Translation
Alas! Pity towards me sleeps so strongly
that I know not whether I am dead or alive.
Resistance, Refusal, Disdain are of one accord
against me in order to torment me.
If I complain, I am not committing a great
crime,
when, in the end I am given this reward,
from which I see myself killed without being guilty.
And since thus I find in nothing consolation,
Joy, Pleasure have departed from me
and have abandoned me, from which I receive
death
without ever having any pardon.
I do not live, rather suffer and languish.
Now there is no good which takes force within me,
whence I see myself killed [without being guilty.]Text revision and
translation © Robyn Smith