Grey sea, white king
Mar. 3rd, 2012 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomust
Walking has been rather half-hearted lately: winter weather, out of the habit and feeling unfit, other things to do - take your pick. But we'd made a date with Sue WINOLJ to go for a walk last Sunday, and I wanted a picture of Cullercoats for a website, so we left the car next to a little park and walkd through to the river, and down to the coast, then along as far as the Barnacle where we had fish and chips for lunch. We could have returned by metro, but we didn't, we walked back - not a long walk even so, but with enough pavement pounding to feel longer than it was.
Last night we went to a concert by the Northern Early Music Collective called 'Songs for the White King'; it doesn't seem fair that the concert should have so much better a name than the performers. The White King was Emperor Maximilian I - I don't know why - and the music was either by composers associated with his court or particularly popular at the time, arranged for lute, viol, cornett, recorder and soprano voice.
Apparently it would have been unusual for it to be performed without some sort of keyboard, and the arrangements owed much to keyboard styles, but it worked. I don't often enjoy the classical soprano voice, but particularly liked the way Faye Newton's voice and Jamie Savan's cornett worked together - even when she sang Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen, which I know from the singing of James Bowman.
The programme very obligingly provides translations, but I've been looking in vain for the original text of Mein Mütterlein, which I think was performed as a catch:
My little mother asked me if I would marry a scribe. 'Heavens no!' I said. If I were to take a scribe for a husband people would call me 'Mrs Scribe' and an 'ink-spotted shrew'. I'd be in disgrace, dishonoured in the whole land.I'd love to be able to call someone an ink-spotted shrew in authentic sixteenth century German.
ETA: Thanks to the peerless research skills of
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wolfinthewood, I now know that an 'ink-spotted shrew' is ein Tintenzeterin.
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no subject
Date: 2012-03-04 12:54 am (UTC)I'd ask
no subject
Date: 2012-03-04 03:35 am (UTC)< consults several dictionaries; gets interrupted by computer virus; tries again >
I'd guess "Tintbesudelte Zenkerin", or maybe "Zanktüfel". Spelling varied a bit from region to region, o/c...
no subject
Date: 2012-03-04 10:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-04 10:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 05:45 pm (UTC)