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

Se non ti piacque in ingrat'abitare

madrigal by Paolo da Firenze

Sources

London: British Library, Additional 29987, fol. 50v-51 (2/2);
Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds italien 568, fol. 35v-36 (2/2).

Facsimiles

The Manuscript London, British Museum Add. 29987, facsimile edition by Gilbert Reaney, [n.p.]: American Institute of Musicology, 1965. Musicological Studies and Documents 13, (Lo).

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. 167 (Pn568).
2. GOZZI, Marco. [London, British Library 29987: Transcription and Commentary], 2 vols., dissertation, Cremona, Scuola di paleografica musicale, University of Pavia: 1984-1985.
3. GARFORTH, Constance C. The Lo Manuscript: A Trecento Collection, Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University: 1983.
4. 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. 271.

Literature

1. FELLIN, Eugene C. A Study of Superius Variants in the Sources of Italian Trecento Music: Madrigals and Cacce, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin: 1970, passim.
2. FELLIN, Eugene C. 'The notation-types of Trecento music', L'Ars nova italiana del Trecento IV: Certaldo 1975, 1978, pp. 211-224.

Text

Se non ti piacque in ingrat'abitare
'nanz'al crear del mondo, i qua' dannasti,
Idio giusto, non basti:
qua vegiam buon lor colpi sterminare.

Mundissimo, se sdegni e' maculati
carmi superbi, e ambiziosi diri,
movan nostri sospiri
te, a vendicar già l'onte d'i' sforzati.

Chi falso monta, folminando piove.
Chi tosto 'ngrassa tosto si dissolve

Translation

O just God, you disliked the ungrateful
whom you damned before the creation of the world.
And yet it was not enough:
here we see the unworthy being exterminated by their blows.

O most pure One, if you hate corrupt
boastful songs, and pretentious statements,
may you be moved by our complaints
to avenge the shame of those who have been wronged.

Whoever rises through falsehood falls like rain at lightning speed.
Whoever grows fat quickly, quickly wastes away.

Text revision and translation © Giovanni Carsaniga