in search of a translation

[cellio]

Last night at choir practice a member asked me to sing in a subgroup that she'll be directing. Naturally, much medieval and renaissance music is religious (particularly Catholic), which poses problems for me, so when I was handed music without a translation I knew I'd have to do a quick check. The process went something like this:

Language: Latin or Italian. I don't recognize most of these words and I don't see any of the markers that would tell me it's Italian. (That doesn't mean it's not; I only know either language to sing, really.) Skim skim skim... aha, there's an "aleiluia" [1] at the end; suspicion is Latin and sacred. Nope, still don't see any obvious problems like references to Jesus or the trinity or Mary. Still don't know Latin. Ok, off to Google.

Oh! Yes, sacred, but it would never have occurred to me that John Dunstable would set this popular passage from Song of Songs. Ok, I can work with that. :-) (But wherever did they get that translation? Here, try this one. Are we seeing the effects of two other languages between the Hebrew and English? Does the Latin really say what CPDL says it does?)

The performances I've heard of this song are somewhat ponderous and somber, not at all matching the text (either version :-) ). I'm not sure how much of that is driven by the music itself and how much by performance decisions. (I haven't started to learn it yet, but I did download the Encore source so I can play with it.) I wonder what we'll do with it. It should be fun.

[1] In Latin texts we sometimes see "Alleluia" and sometimes "Hallelujah". I can see how a listener could get the former from the latter, since a leading 'h' is pretty weak, but this is not an oral tradition. Is there some semantic difference between the two?

Comments

[siderea]

No, the Latin really does say what the CPDL says it does. It's very reasonably literal. I prefer to translate "carissima" as "dearest", since it's the superlative of "cara" ("dear"), and I might have a few other quibbles.

[cellio]

Thank you. So the differences entered at either Hebrew -> Greek or Greek -> Latin. (I wonder which, but since Greek is all Greek to me, so to speak, I'll never figure it out on my own. If any of my readers who are conversant in Greek are reading, this would be your cue to speak up. :-) )