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

Questa legiadra luce arde 'l mie core

ballata by Andrea da Firenze

Sources

Florence: Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Palatino 87 (Squarcialupi Codex), fol. 190v (2/2).

Facsimiles

Il Codice Squarcialupi edited by F. Alberto GALLO, Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 1992.

Editions

1. Der Squarcialupi-Codex Pal. 87 der Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana zu Florenz, edited by Johannes Wolf and H. Albrecht, Lippstadt: Kistner and Siegel, 1955, p. 350.
2. The Music of Fourteenth Century Italy, edited by Nino Pirrotta, [n.p.]: American Institute of Musicology, 1964. Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 8/V, p. 25.
3. Italian Secular Music, edited by W. Thomas Marrocco, Monaco: Editions de L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1977. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century X, p. 44.

Text Editions

CORSI, Giuseppe. Poesie musicali del Trecento, Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1970, p. 305.

Literature

WILLIAMS, Carol. 'Setting the scene for a study of Andrea da Firenze', Miscellanea Musicologica: Adelaide Studies in Musicology, 15 (1988), p. 84.

Text

Questa legiadra luce arde 'l mie core
con suo dolce bellezza e l'almo amore.

Lasso! ché quanto più costei riguardo,
più s'accende la mente del suo foco:
benché cruda mi sia, un mortal dardo
nel cor m'ha messo e mai non trovo loco.
Ma te, Amor, cagion di ciò non poco,
priego de l'arco tuo mostri 'l valore

Translation

This lovely light enflames my heart
with her sweet beauty and life-giving love.

Alas! the more I look at her
the more my mind is aflame with her fire:
though she is cruel to me, she has pierced my heart
with a deadly dart, and deprived me of peace.
But you, Love, who are the main cause of all this,
pray, show the virtue of your bow.
Text revision and translation © Giovanni Carsaniga