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

Sofrir m'estuet et plus non puis durer

ballata by Paolo da Firenze

Sources

Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds italien 568, fol. 80v (3/1).

Editions

1. 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. 144.
2. 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. 172.
3. French Secular Music. Virelais, edited by Gordon K. Greene, Monaco: Editions de L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1987. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century XXI, p. 42.
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. 287.

Literature

1. PIRROTTA, Nino. 'Paolo da Firenze in un nuovo frammento dell' Ars nova', Musica Disciplina, X (1956), p. 63.
2. THIBAULT, Geneviève. 'Emblèmes et devises des Visconti dans les oeuvres musicales du Trecento', L'Ars nova italiana del Trecento III: Certaldo 1969, 1970, p. 152.
3. FISCHER, Kurt von. 'Musica e società nel Trecento italiano', L'Ars nova italiana del Trecento III: Certaldo 1969, 1970, p. 19.
4. BAUMANN, Dorothea. 'Some extraordinary forms in the Italian secular Trecento repertoire', L'Ars nova italiana del Trecento IV: Certaldo 1975, 1978, pp. 45-63.

Recordings

The Medieval Romantics, Gothic Voices, directed by Christopher Page (1991): CDA66463.

Text

Sofrir m'estuet et plus non puis durer
le grant fors d'amour:
je fort languis con joye en grant doulour.

Vidor gli ochi mortal di razi accesa
fiammegiar una stella al modo un sole;

la vista mia non poté far difesa:
passò el razo al core onde si dole.

Non val sospir, non fé, non dir parole,
en grant doye est mon cuer:
je pourport esperans in douls amour.

[Sofrir m'estuet et plus non puis durer
le grant fors d'amour:
je fort languis con joye en grant doulour.

Translation

I must suffer and can no longer endure
the great power of love.
I languish deeply, joy and great sorrow in perfect balance.

My mortal eyes saw a star, blazing like a sun,
surrounded with bright rays.

My eyesight could not put up a shield: a ray
passed through to the heart which therefore is in pain.

There is no point in sighing, in pledging faith, in saying words.
My heart is in great sorrow.
I carry within me hope in sweet love.

[I must suffer and can no longer endure
the great power of love.
I languish deeply, joy and great sorrow in perfect balance.]Text revision and translation © Robyn Smith