Es fugt sich: It Happened – It happened some weeks ago looking back over my shoulder that I saw in the distance the presence of the fifteenth century vagabond, sometime pauper, sometime wealthy merchant, knight and diplomat of princes (Burger und Hoffmann), poet, composer and musician Oswald von Wallenstein (1377-1445).
The three main topics of his work were Travel, God, and Sex. The songspiel -Es Fugt Sich (It Happened) tells his life story and is made up of VII stanzas (each 16 lines long). From the CD Songs of Myself performed by Andreas Scholl (2010) here are some following “vaguenings” of the written words:
# 1. It happened, when I was ten years old,
that I wanted to see what the world was.
I have been in warm and cold places, in misery and poverty,
with Christians, Greek-Orthodox, and heathens…
…I had three cents in my pocket,..
# II. To Prussia, Lithuania, Turkey, Turkey over the Sea, to France…
– I’ve sailed seas high and low –
… the Black Sea taught me how to cling to a barrel,
when my brigantine…
(I was a merchant then, and survived, me and an Russian.)
# III. Before the Queen of Aragon-so beautiful and tender-
I knelt down…
# IV. Mein tummes lebenwolt ich verkeren, das is war
und ward ein halber beghart wol zwai ganze jar
(Truthfully, I wanted to start a new life,
for a good two years I was a half begging monk)
… in truth, never before or after were girls so friendly…
# V. It would take too long if I told all my sorrows,
still, ravishing lips infatuate me especially…
# VI. Four hundred women and more…
# VII. I have lived…
mit toben, wuten, tichten, singen manger lai
(being wild, celebrating, making poems, and singing songs)
Ich Walkenstein, leb sicher klain vernunftlichlt
das ich der welt also lang begin zu hellen.