Talk:Musica reservata

Wrong translation

<<Carmina chromatico, quae audis modulata tenore" -- "chromatic songs, which you hear to be gracefully performed" or "chromatic songs, which you hear to have a modulating tenor" (a pun in Latin).>>

Both translation are not correct, "chromatico" in the Latin phrase by Lasso can refer only to "tenore", not to "carmina" ("chromatic songs" in the incorrect translation). Olor (talk) 08:38, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Olor is right: 'chromatic songs' would be correct only if chromatico were spelled chromatica. Could somebody check the original to see if we have a typo here? Furthermore, modulata tenore cannot be a 'modulating tenor' for two reasons: [1] modulata has the wrong gender to apply to tenor (in the phrase as written, it can apply only to carmina, the songs), and [2] modulata is a past participle ('modulated'), not a present one ('modulating'). Given the present spellings, a closer translation might be 'Songs that you hear modulated through a chromatic tenor'. Jacob (talk) 12:33, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I have the original. There is no typo in the Latin, but I don't know who provided the translation (I had a different one in my first draft of this article in 2006). That's before we were doing inline cites so I'm not even sure what source I was using (Reese?). My CD liner notes give "These verses which you hear, set in chromatic style", which isn't intended to be literal. Feel free to change the translation to a correct one. Antandrus (talk) 13:35, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

The quote may be ok, but what about the punctuation? Taking chromatico and tenore together, you could get "songs, which you hear modulated by a chromatic tenor", but then that comma is pretty confusing. --Ioscius ^∞ 21:19, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

While no one dared to correct the (false) translation, I dared. Comments are welcome. Olorulus (talk) 09:55, 20 October 2012 (UTC)