DESCRIPTION:
Geoffrey Gordon's Collage a Trois Trobar, commissioned for Twin Cities-based, Dare to Breathe, for five mixed voices with recorders and percussion--from a performance at the Cliff Dweller Club, Chicago (December, 2000).

From the composer's program notes:

Collage a Trois Trobar is inspired by, and draws musical materials from, three Troubadour songs of the 12th and 13th centuries--namely: Dehors Lonc pre el bosquel, Volez Vos que je Vos Chant and Bem platz longa . . . the texts of which follow below.

Dehors Lonc:
Dehors lonc pre el bosquel
Erroie avant hier.
La vi mener grant revel
Enmi un sentier.
D'une jolie tousette,
sage, plesant et jonete,
Dex tant m'abeli,
Quant seule la vi;
Et la touse tout ensi
Commence a chanter:
"Robin, que je doi amer,
Tu puetz bien trop demorer."

(TRANSLATION:
Near the arbor of Loncpre,
I wandered the day before yesterday.
There I saw, moving tremulously
along a pathway,a pretty maiden
Intelligent, pleasant and young.
God, I was enraptured
to see her all alone.
And as young girls will,
she began to sing to herself:
"Robin, I should be loved,
it is a risk to wait too long." )

Volez Vos:
Volez vos que je vos chant
Un son a'mors avenant.
Villain nel fist mie. .
Ainz le fist un chevalier,
Soz l'onbre d'un olivier,
Entre les braz s'amie.

(TRANSLATION:
Shall I sing you a pretty song of love?
No common villein gave it life.
It was composed by a knight,
Underneath an olive tree,
wrapped in the arms of his true love.)

Bem platz longa:
Bem platz longa nuech oscura,
E mais el temps que plus dura.
E non lais ges per freidura
Qu'ien leials gaita non sia,
Tota via, Per tal que segurs estia.
Fis drutz quan pren gauzimen
De domp na valen, E crit qan vel l'alba.

(TRANSLATION:
During the long and dark night,
which is never too long for me,
I am, despite the cold weather,
a restless watchman over lovers discretion.
Until the first light, I stand guard,
then I urge with my cry:
Beware, here comes the dawn.)


As the title of Collage a Trois Trobar implies, these texts have been cut up and reassembled by the composer, in an effort to alter--and sharpen--their meaning.

Geoffrey Gordon
7 September 2000