A melody and profane lyrics from 1000 years ago, contained in a single manuscript from Northern Italy composed between Lodi and Novara. The musical notation above the Middle Latin text of manuscript Vat.Lat.3251 is semidiastematic and the pitch of the note F is indicated. Ours is the first complete recording of this song.
Under green foliage filtering the light of the morning sun, or perhaps within the walls of a cold and calm 11th century scriptorium, an anonymous hand wrote the carmen amatorium “Crus ocelle meum velle”, a love lyric that is almost hermetic in its language rich in allusions and esotericism: a sweet succession of melancholic and marvelous images blooming heavily in their innocent desperation, those who listen to the verses are invited to love before losing youth's bloom and rotting, and the betrayed faith is compared to a brutally cut oak which, even if replanted, is no longer going to generate new leaves.
Lyrics and Music: BAV, Vat.Lat.3251, second half of the 11th century, Lodi/Novara (Northern Italy)
Musical reconstruction: Silvia Kuro
Thanks to Professors Davide Daolmi and Adriano Cassano for revising the translation from the Latin lyrics.
English translated lyrics:
Tear away my stump, love, but with a secret heart not of stone, somewhere distant and later evident.
Sweet is love whose clamor resonates through the ether, whose song is painful for me and shakes me from the inside (entering my bowels).
Spare me, I beg you, for it is decent if you do not want to ruin me! Undressing I undress, joking I joke, in the way you used to play.
As long as your youth is demanded, come to me, for when it is rotten it will wear out and lose its value.
While you asked for jackets and shirts to be given to you, and the sandals you wanted did not lack buckles.
Oh, avoid such a serious crime, I told you and I tell you again, I am not the same one to whom you promised mutual trust.
The felled oak and the faith betrayed are almost alike, because when cut down and replanted they do not produce new leaves.
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Video: Silvia Kuro
Recorded at the Oratorio di Sant'Antonio, Craveggia (VB)
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Our studies on Middle latin poetry and the music of the 11th century, aimed at the creation of a new album, named "CARMINA", which will be published in 2025. We are reconstructing a repertoire composed of the earliest profane Latin songs of the Italian and European territory.
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