14th February 2024:
In this Valentine’s Day special, we had fun with Veni dilectissime (I translate that as: ‘Come Here, Sexy!’ 😎), a song from an 11th-century songbook, copied in the Rhineland and now in Cambridge University library. This goliardic song caused so much offence in the middle ages that a do-gooder scribe actually splodged it out of the manuscript! 😱
In this close-up image (which you can view in Cambridge University’s Digital Library), you can see that a previous attempt to remove the medieval splodged ink with chemicals sadly failed to restore the words (and probably caused them to fade even more). Thankfully, modern scholarship and UV technology have brought at least some of it back, and experts on Latin poetry have proposed plausible words to fill in the blanks.
No melody survives, but the words have such a common rhythm that it’s easy enough to patch together bits of existing medieval melodies in order to sing them in a medieval-ish way.
Catch-up video
N.b., the Sequentia song I played during this session had to be cut out due to copyright restrictions. But you can find it linked in the ‘recommended listening’ section, below.
Interview with Benjamin Bagby (also in the catch-up video)
Just in case you don’t fancy the full catch-up video, here’s the best bit! The first recording of this song text (to my knowledge) was made by Sequentia Ensemble for Medieval Music for their album Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper (you’ll find this gorgeous recording embedded below). I’m really happy that Benjamin Bagby (Sequentia director, also known for his incredible performances of Beowulf) agreed to let me interview him about the song. As well as a sublimely creative musician and director, Ben is an absolute treasure trove of fascinating medieval music knowledge.
Sequentia’s (beautiful) arrangement
My (silly) arrangement
The emojis in this video may not be very historically informed, but I like to think they’re in keeping with the spirit… 😬
Further listening
Albums of music from the ‘Cambridge Songs’ manuscript:
- Sequentia: Boethius, Songs of Consolation; part of Sam Barrett’s Restoring Lost Songs project
- Sequentia: Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper
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