Really wonderful performance and uplifting vibe, Michele. Perfect for the Christmas season! Biggest Congrats, my friend ❄️🎄

A beautiful share, Michele ... beautiful orchestration, strings ...  masterful work my friend!

This is beautiful, Michele!  I really love the strings.  Wonderful track!

very good my Friend Congratulações vocals wonderfulls

Really nice production! I can imagine this being in a movie

[It’s definitely not a Christmas song, but the mood should feel acceptably Christmassy].

A few years ago I tried setting this text to music; it’s very well known here among students because it is considered one of the earliest attestations of the Italian language. Discovered on an inner leaf of a liturgical codex preserved in Verona, it was written between the 8th and 9th centuries by an anonymous hand. It is regarded as a “riddle” (see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronese_Riddle), generating an enormous amount of scholarship. 
To me, its musicality is evident. 

Compared to the version I recorded in 2018 (I had posted it on YouTube, where it still is), based on the Washburn and the sounds of my old Yamaha, I added some VSTs and re-equalized the vocals. Back then, multiplying the vocal tracks was the most fun part, in order to obtain a choral effect. What came out is what I would call a “false traditional folk song".

The cover illustration is found on one of the opening pages of an 11th-century manuscript preserved at the British Library (Cotton MS Tiberius B. V — see here: https://www.imagesonline.bl.uk/asset/12286/).

Text (original / english translation)

Se pareba boves
alba pratalia araba
et albo versorio teneba
et negro semen seminaba

He led oxen in front of him
ploughed white fields
And held a white plough
And sowed black seed

Posted on SoundCloud: 2025, December 16.

The Riddle*

Update (December 9, 2025). 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MagLpl21qdY
I’ve posted the entire suite “In case nothing happens” on YouTube, including the parts (7 and 8) that are still missing here, accompanied by a very simple video.


Hello! I’m a university professor of history who enjoys playing guitar and piano/keyboard, and occasionally composing — unpretentiously, just for fun. I’ve been here for at least 10 years, but only recently have I started using the platform for something other than just external digital storage.
Most of my recordings (made with a KorgD8, Audacity, and more recently Reaper for MIDI and the Spitfire Audio libraries) are entirely homemade and decidedly imperfect. My music includes old songs (all written back in the last century; here I’ve only shared the ones I’ve reworked in recent years) as well as both old and new instrumentals.
Thanks for stopping by and giving something a listen; in the description you’ll often find explanatory notes or translations of the lyrics.

Here I’ve discovered a community of talented musicians and songwriters, and plenty of beautiful music to enjoy. Whenever I like, comment, or repost a track, it’s always the result of attentive listening. For the same reason, I’m not interested in trading empty “likes” without real engagement, and I won’t reply to messages from would-be promoters — follower counts don’t matter to me in the slightest.

Update (2024, September 9). Completed the "AI & (fake) songwriting project". Here: https://soundcloud.com/mick-hansan 

I've posted some 'live' homemade performance here: https://www.instagram.com/michele_ansani/

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