My friend Jadzia is working on a new website for her editions of medieval and Renaissance music: St. Cecilia Press, and she mentioned that it would be cool if I wrote some singable translations for the pieces she’s edited. So, this week I worked on translations of “El Grillo”, “Es ist ein Schnee gefallen”, and “Plaude euge Theotocos”.
frottola
La vida de Culin
Recently, a friend asked if I would help with a project.
My friend is hosting a ball next year that has a super-cool theme: All of the dances on the dancelist will be dances performed to tunes that also have lyrics. (In other words, they’re dances, but they’re also songs.) And they’ll all be performed by a choir. There was a similar dance this summer that went very well, so he’s planning next summer’s reprise.
He asked me to write a singable translation for a 15th-century Italian dance called “Vita di Cholino”, which is danced to the song “La vida de Culin”. I happily agreed. However, it wasn’t as straight-forward an assignment as I’d assumed…