Available at Amazon: Don Quixote, new translation by Edith Grossman (released on October 21, 2003) |
Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
In 2005, Miguel de Cervantes's superlative novel Don Quixote was 400 years old. As I described in a post at the time of the anniversary (Don Quixote at 400, January 22, 2005), the government of Spain celebrated the anniversary by organizing a special pilgrimage route, the Ruta de Don Quijote, that followed the peregrinations of el ingenioso hidalgo around Spain. There were several new editions of the book in Spain, too, including a paperback made to sell to the masses at 1 € [US$1.30] a piece and a 3,000-page critical edition with illustrations and annotations. Many people have suggested that I read Edith Grossman's new English translation, which was released in a paperback edition in the Don Quixote year, but I have avariciously stuck with the translation I already own, Samuel Putnam's for the Modern Library, in consulation with the Spanish original.
Don Quijote de La Mancha: Romances y Músicas, Montserrat Figueras, Hespèrion XXI, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, Jordi Savall (released on January 10, 2006) |
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Book I, Chapter 2
When the knight sets out on his first adventure, riding across the Campo de Montiel, he drags into an inn, which he takes to be a glorious castle. Seeing two prostitutes waiting there to be taken to Seville, he addresses them as beautiful ladies and the innkeeper as the lord of the manor. A swineherd approaches the inn with his pack of hogs, and the sound of his horn coincides with the madman's arrival:
This at once became for Don Quixote just what he wished it to be: some dwarf who was heralding his coming; and so it was with a vast deal of satisfaction that he presented himself before the ladies in question, who, upon beholding a man in full armor like this, with lance and buckler, were filled with fright and made as if to flee indoors.Part One (Yo soy la locura, or I am Folly) of the first Savall disc begins with an anonymous instrumental fanfare (percussion, shawm, sackbut) that represents -- in my opinion, although judging by the position of the piece, perhaps unintended -- the music that Don Quixote imagines in his addled brain. There are recitations of brief excerpts of the Spanish text, selected by Manuel Forcana, read by Jesús Fuente, Francisco Rojas, and Josep Piera, and interspersed throughout the musical selections, beginning with the famous opening lines. The next musical selection is a lute song, du Bailly's Je suis la folie, a brilliant use here of one form of La Follia, songs that were the basis for an almost infinite number of variation sets in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. This "folly" is the themesong of our crazed protagonist.
To be continued.
Although the title is tempting, the wonderful song by Bailly is NOT a Folia. Sorry,
ReplyDeletePaul Gabler, webmaster of La Folia, a musical cathedral