Medee fu en amer veritable / Ma dame n’a pas ainsy fait a moy [2022]

for soprano and piano

duration :: 5’

First performance :: Ben Smith and Patricia Auchterlonie — Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), 21 November 2022

Two small things: a predominantly faithful rendering of one pass through the repeating sectional structure of the famous but anonymous ars subtilior ballade Medee fu en amer veritable, ending with its immortally haunting refrain to the text Ma dame n'a pas ainsy fait a moy; and, later on, a spectral echo of that same refrain. 

The intermittent ticking in the piano is a question of time in every sense.