Christopher M. Mislow wrote:
>
> I have two questions concerning the medieval hymn to St. John Baptist from
> which Guido of Arezzo is credited (ca. 1040) with having developed the
> musical DO-RE-MI, etc. musical notation from the first syllable of each
> hemistich ("ut" became "DO"; "RE" from "resonare"; "MI" from "mira"; and so
> on). My two questions are these:
>
> First, I have found two versions. The most common is
>
> Ut queant laxis resonare fibris
> Mira gestorum famuli tuorum,
> Solve polluti labii reatum,
> Sancte Ioannes.
>
> However, in "The Age of Faith" (Simon & Schuster 1950) by Will Durant, at
> p. 898, there appears a version where the last word in line 1 ("fibris") is
> rendered instead "floris." Is this a typographical error or do two
> versions exist?
>
> Second, can anyone steer me to (or provide) a faithful and fairly literal
> translation into English? Alas, more than three decades of desuetude have
> rendered my Latin less than serviceable. I can reconstruct most of the
> text -- with Latin dictionary in hand -- from which the overall sense is
> evident, but holes remain. (I have seen a few translations, but these
> translations, in an apparent effort to capture the spirit and convey the
> flavor of the original, have taken unjustified liberties with the actual
> text.)
> I did not see the debated words (laxis...fibris) in the translation cited by our sapientes. I don't know about two versions, either, but 'laxis...floris' does not make sense. My attempt: 'That thy servants may resound, deep in their weary hearts, the wonders of thy deeds, remit, Saint John, the sin of their stained lips." After all, this singing was not just a musical production, but a call to penance, in keeping with the character of St. John the Baptist.
Luciana
> Thank-you in advance.
>
> --Christopher
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Luciana Cuppo Csaki
Societas internationalis pro Vivario
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://www.geocities.com/athens/aegean/9891/
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