Harpsichord Lid Mottos

[Greg Kilcup]

The time is nearing when we will have to choose a motto
for the lid of our new Flemish harpsichord. At the moment
I would pick something like

"Per aures ad animum" (Through the ears to the soul)

or

"Musica laetitiae comes medicina dolorum"
(Music is the companion of joy, the medicine of sorrow)

What are your favorite musical mottos?
Or does anyone have a pointer into the journals
for a list of historical mottos?

Thanks, GK

---------------------------------------------------------------
Gregory Kilcup kil...@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu
Asst. Prof. of Physics kil...@ohstpy.bitnet
The Ohio State University (614) 292-3224
---------------------------------------------------------------

[Frances Palmer]

--
Frances Palmer

[Richard Hargrove]

In article <KILCUP.93J...@einstein.mps.ohio-state.edu> kil...@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu (Greg Kilcup) writes:
>
>What are your favorite musical mottos?
>Or does anyone have a pointer into the journals
>for a list of historical mottos?
>
>Thanks, GK
>

Someone used this for their .signature a while back. I liked it so much
I copied it and use it myself periodically.

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| "La musique est une science qui veut qu'on rit et chant et danse" |
| (Music is a science that would have one laugh and sing and dance.) |
| -- Guillaume de Machaut (1300-77), both the greatest French poet and the |
| greatest French composer of his century. And if this is argument from |
| authority, let us make the most of it! ;-) |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

I left the editorial comment in for completeness.

Granted, it is a Flemish harpsichord.

regards,
Richard Hargrove
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Gower: Why the enemy is loud; you hear him all night. |
| Fluellen: If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, is it |
| meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass and a |
| fool and a prating coxcomb? |
| |
| King Henry V: act IV, scene I |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| USPS: Convex Computer Corp. phone: 214/497-4323 |
| 3000 Waterview Pkwy. fax: 214/497-4441 |
| Richardson, TX 75080 net: rich...@convex.com |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[Carmen Hermosillo]

The harpsichord I owned before the one I play now
had on its lid the motto

SEX AND DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL

very tastefully translated into Latin, of course...

[Don Cameron]

Then there's the famous riddle, whose exact wording escapes me,
but is something like

"First I was alive;
then I was dead;
now I live again.
What am I?"

I think the last line - the question - is perhaps not included
in the motto, but simply implied.

Can someone supply the correct wording, and the Latin translation?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don Cameron d...@cup.hp.com | My other car is a harpsichord.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Richard Hargrove]

You might want to consider the more traditional variant:

WINE AND WOMEN AND SONG

Tastefully translated into Latin, of course.

regards,
Richard Hargrove
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend |
| The brightest heaven of invention, |
| A kingdom for a stage, princes to act |
| And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! |
| Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, |
| Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels, |
| Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire |
| Crouch for employment. |
| |
| King Henry V: Prologue |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[beth diane garfinkel]

I seem to remember one that was something like "Non habet scientia
inimicum nisi ignorantem."--"Science has no enemy if not the ignorant
(man, in this case, but you get the idea)." This was from a Ruckers
harpsichord featured in some painting or other and also still in
existence. . .

Two summers ago, when I was working at the Utah Shakespearean Festival,
we musicians reconditioned one of the festival harpsichords. Since one
of the plays that year was Twelfth Night, we adapted one of the
better-known lines from that play into Latin: "Musica cibus amoris est."
(Music is the food of love.) Sometimes I think we would have done
better to leave the line as it was: If music be the food of love, play
on!

Beth
--
"Under the green wood tree/Who loves to lie with me/And tune his merry
note/Unto the sweet bird's throat/Come hither, come hither, come hither/
Here he shall see/No enemy/But winter and rough weather."
--William Shakespeare

[Roland Hutchinson]

My personal fave:

Magnas habent phantasias qui canunt chely.

--
Roland Hutchinson Visiting Specialist/Early Music
Internet: rhut...@pilot.njin.net Department of Music
Bitnet: rhutchin@NJIN Montclair State College
All-in-1 (MSC campus): rhut...@pilot.njin.net@wins Upper Montclair, NJ 07043

[Rick Grandia]

What you are probably thinking of is an inscription seen in - if I recall
correctly - a painting by Vermeer:

"Dum vivi, tacui;
mortuus dulce cano"

which translates to:

"whilst yet I lived, I was silent;
now that I am dead, I sing sweetly"

referring, of course, to the wood the virginal was made of.

Rick Grandia
CRI...@rulmvs.LeidenUniv.nl
Centraal Rekeninstituut
Rijksuniversiteit Leiden

[Carmen Hermosillo]

jeeeeeeeeeeez Ken when did you get on the net?

And I thought I was all alone out here chewing
on electrons.

I don't think rec.music. early is ready
for my darlin purple monster....

--------------------------------------------
hum...@well.sf.ca.us | gotta be rocknroll
hum...@netcom.com | music if you wanna
| dance with me
|
--------------------------------------------

[ottoste...@gmail.com]

There is the Latin pentameter (second line of elegiac couplet) "Dum vixi tacui, mortua dulce cano." "Alive, I was silent. Dead, I sing sweetly."