"to charm, to strengthen, and to teach"

And so it begins. The title of this blog is taken from a terrific album of medieval and renaissance music recorded by the Orlando Consort (well worth buying). As a recently-minted PhD in historical musicology, an amateur but studious cook and mixologist, and a once-and-future singer, I have accepted the challenge to gather my interests both gastronomical and musicological in one place.

To begin, I share one of the loveliest songs surviving from the fifteenth century. The song is composed by Guillaume Du Fay, perhaps the most celebrated composer of the fifteenth century and likened by some to be music's Jan van Eyck. Written in the 1420s, the song itself is a farewell song, "Adieu ces bons vons de Lannoys" [Farewell to the good wines of the Laonnais] -- this is Du Fay's farewell to fine wines, joy and pleasure, townspeople, and his love. Here is the text and translation. N.B. this song survives on one page of one book, written at the bottom of the last page of that book and is partially lost thanks to a hungry mouse. Let us be grateful that the mouse was not more hungry that day.

Why a farewell as an opening? Beginnings often make me think of endings and T.S. Eliot tells us: The end is where we start from. So let us begin with our farewell.