A musical gem from the fourteenth century

A sunny, breezy song from the fourteenth century, the period of the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, and the Great Famine. Despite these calamities, we know from Boccaccio's Decameron that people knew how to divert themselves with songs, games, and story-telling, even as the plague raged around them. Why not? Tomorrow you may be dead. Why spend today feeling miserable about it? Contrary to what many videos on Youtube would have you believe, the sun actually did shine in the fourteenth century, and the summers actually did have bright and mildly warm days. This song will give you the other side of the unexamined preconceptions of sensationalist history. The lyrics are about how to live in courtly fashion, how to be well-spoken and use one's words prudently: "He who wants to be welcome must say things well and speak wisely, and watch himself before he says something unpleasant about another". (Bien dire et sagement parler doit De cascun qui voelt a bien venir Et sur soy meismes regarder Avant qu'il die de nulluy desplaysir.) The composer is unknown, but he certainly had a flair for melody, and was capable of engaging in the most delightful rhythmic play. Bien dire survives in a three-part version in a fragmentary manuscript from the mid-fourteenth century, kept at Cambrai in France. That version starts at 2:06. The much later Chantilly manuscript has a four-part version, which can be heard at the beginning and end of the video. Image: Narcissus by the fountain; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS fr. 1567, fol. 12v (c1300-1325).