Following the composition of the ballade, the Lover returns to the court, and as he arrives he comes upon a large company of people, including his lady, dancing in a meadow. He notes that there were no instruments or minstrels, ‘but diverting, courtly and lively little songs’ sung by the participants. The lady invites him to dance, and soon after to sing, and he complies by singing the monophonic virelai Dame, a vous, whose dance-like quality is heard in its rhythmic verve and use of hemiola, and whose third stanza seems to refer directly to the Lover’s inability to tell his lady of his feelings earlier in the story. Immediately after he finishes, we are told, a young lady begins another song and the dancing continues unabated; here we get a picture of what these social dances might have been like: one song folding into another, until finally it is time to return to the castle, hear Mass and have dinner.

As they walk back to the castle, the lady asks the Lover why he disappeared so suddenly earlier, and, bolstered by Hope’s teaching, the Lover explains the whole story, recapitulating for her the events of the narrative thus far. As proof of his feelings of love, he tells her, if she ‘looks over that last little song I sang [Dame, a vous], whose words and music I composed, you could readily discover whether I lie or speak the truth’. The song thus authenticates the Lover’s emotions, and the lady accepts his love. The after-dinner entertainment includes an elaborate list of nearly two dozen instruments of all sizes and sounds, which nevertheless performed ‘without discord’, and then performances by singers so skilled in both ‘old and new styles’ of music that they were superior to Orpheus.

from notes by Anne Stone © 2023