Ich was ein chint so wolgetan

Ich was ein chint so wolgetan from the Carmina Burana (carmina amatoria, no. 185) is one of  my favourite songs, even though it's basically about rape (the story is basically this: a young country girl, picking flowers, meets a man who lures her back to some linden trees and has sex with her against her will. The song is a mixture between Middle High German and Medieval Latin, and is clearly a comic song).

Crocky brought home a version from a music project and it's so awesome I fell in love with it, in spite of the text. It probably reflects the culture and the idea of humour from back in the day very well. I did not find the song from that project anywhere online, but an example of a similar idea of what the melody must have sounded like can be found on this CD, it's no.7.

( This is the text )

( English version by David Parlett )

( Modern German translation )

Below is an excerpt from the codex, featuring the writing and the notation. In the space above the text you can see the earliest forms of musical notation, neumes, which allow a very rough idea of what this song must have sounded like.
These are unheightened neumes, neumes without staff-lines, and therefore allow only a very rough idea - oddly enough, as notation with staff lines was technically known in the days when the Codex Burensis was supposedly composed, which is around 1230, although possibly not so much for secular music. The songs for which they do have melodies thus were all assembled through concordances with other manuscripts. From what I know, there is no explanation for why adiastemic neumes were used in the collection, especially as the collectors were clearly learned enough to know about the other notation systems. (While trawling the internets for more information on this, I came across this utterly awesome project devoted to digitalising neumes.)

The songs in the collection are attributed to the Goliards, German, English, Italian and French vagrant monks from the profane order of "St Golias", who were, in contrast to other monks, not averse to wine, woman, and song. They were clerical students who travelled from university to university or just generally travelled. The songs do offer a lot of evidence of their education - there are both paragraphs in Latin as well as quotes from philosophers and scholars. The Goliards were following the probably fictional "St. Golias" and were very critical of the political powers and the church, and wrote satirical poems and songs to express their discontent, but also bawdy songs and tales.
If this attribution is correct, that would make the codex an example of around 778 years old student culture, which is somehow awesome.

 

Yesterday

Yesterday was pretty much the perfect day. Perfect. I had asked Crocky whether she'd like to see What the Butler Saw with me, and so she came along and spent the day with me in Hamburg, which is always a good foundation of a perfect day.

At first, I went to see one of my examiners, the didactics one, who is just generally wonderful and awesome and who chatted to me about my final paper and was very interested in my topic. I love her. Then, I picked up two Scheine, which I was very pleased with, as well.



Since by then it was only around 3pm, there was a lot of time to kill until 7.30pm. Thus, we went to see Hancock, which I had unwisely not read any reviews of and which I was exited about because it features a Will Smith as a superhero.


Why I Did Not Like Hancock In Spite of Will

After three quarters of an hour, feeling vaguely self-conscious and nerdy for doing so, I leant across to Crocky and told her I was wondering whether this movie is actually worse from a gender perspective or a race perspective only to find out that she'd been trying to make up her mind about that, too.

Of course now some people will roll their eyes and marvel how she and I can even be bothered to care enough about such things to let them interfere with watching a good movie, and rest assured that I really wouldn't have, had there been a decent enough movie to watch. Now, it's not as bad as The Happening, which had me wondering and thankful for watching it, because it may actually be the absolutely worst movie I have ever had the privilege of seeing, but just generally... sort of... wrong on several levels.

The only good things were probably the special-effects and the mere fact that it has a black superhero! As a main character! As the title role! Which was awesome.

Not so awesome was pretty much everything else.

The blatant, really unnecessary nationalism, which was probably only to be expected of a movie that opened on the fourth of July - and still I think that the film could have afforded to lose a few eagles, especially the random real eagle that made a WTF-inspiring appearance in the closing scenes.

The way the hero had to be told to adjust to the role of the tradintional, white superhero to be accepted by society, guided by a wise, well-adjusted white mentor figure and with the vulnerable white, blonde woman as the ultimate prize at the end. How- in spite of her freaking super powers- said white, blond woman's purpose was to be saved by the male hero, for heaven's sake. How this is also a movie about a poverty-stricken, aggressive alcoholic being polished up for society by the nice upper-class, white family.
How the backstory stayed lame and vague and was only introduced in the last part of the film, making a rushed appearance.

How, in spite of Hancock, there was just one other black character, who was of course a male news presenter, and a few criminals without lines, and no black women at all. This especially made Hancock not only "the only of his kind" as a superhero, but also the only of his kind as a black character, which is sad, as the film was promising.

So, I did not really like it. I still love watching Will Smith, but the first black superhero could really have deserved a different context in my eyes.

We then went and watched the University Player's performance of Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw, which was very, very enjoyable.
Even though I know that some people had had their doubts about the effectiveness of having the characters played by cross-dressing characters of the opposite sex, that made the play all the more enjoyable to watch for me.
The skill of the actors and the professionalism of the production once again made me marvel at the skill of the people involved.

As always.