REVIEW: Love To My Liking // Early Music America
TROUVÈRE SONGS OF LOVE AND LOSS
By: Aaron Keebaugh | April, 2024
“Subtle tosses of the voice suggest that even through such emotional turmoil, all might not be lost. Percussive rhythms then slowly build to a frenzy. Even amid the deepest blues, these performances seem to say that there is always a bright side. All one has to do is dance.”
“In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours,” Maya Angelou wrote. Her words not only express the elation of finally finding that special love, they hint at the pain of that bond being interrupted by events beyond one’s control.
Medieval writers were no less fixated on the wayward emotions of having loved and lost. But they could offer only fleeting solace should the experience inevitably tip towards the latter. Pain, some trouvère poets wrote, at least meant that you attempted to play the game. And the bittersweet feelings that sting the heart along the way — part of the human experience — connect us in common grief.
