Mille regretz

I have been thinking a lot about the accordion piece that I am still writing. I just finished the last touches of the second movement, and now was left with a great feeling of emptiness, since I didn't know exactly what to do next, to finish this triptych. I liked the idea I read somewhere that a triptych is "life, death and everything in between," and I wanted to explore that. For me, this particular triptych works as a love story. The first tableau is the protagonist thinking about his loved one, while wondering around the city. The second one is about things not happening, things that try to happen but never actually occur, trying to accomplish something, but he doesn't dare, and in the end he loses his chance. Following this, I thought the best was for the third tableau to be the logical conclusion: he realizes he has lost all hope in his pursuit of love, he must give up and continue with his life as well as he can.

The music came together with this idea. Last week in the Music History lesson we listened to the song Mille regretz by Josquin des Prés. I really loved the music and the text, which I will copy later, it is such a simple melody, just composed of descending scales, but it is so well worked out with the four part harmonies, very simply based on patterns of parallel thirds and perfect consonances. I fell in love with it right away, I made a reduction for piano of the score and I have been playing it all the time.

Mille regretz de vous abandonner
Et d'eslonger vostre fache amoureuse,
Jay si grand dueil et paine douloureuse,
Quon me verra brief mes jours definer.
**

A thousand regrets at deserting you
and leaving behind your loving face,
I feel so much sadness and such painful distress,
that it seems to me my days will soon dwindle away.

 My idea was to make a variation on this song as the final movement of the piece, "adjusting" it to the general bleak and silent mood of the rest of the music. I wanted to make something that made reference to Mille regretz without actually being it. I am thinking of something really slow and with few notes, with lots of silences and pianissimo chords. I still haven't written anything that pleases me, but I shall continue today in with this.