Story of My Misfortunes (or: Historia Calamitatum)

About this recording

Autobiographies from remote historical periods can be especially fascinating.

Modes of self-presentation vary greatly across the centuries, as of course does

the very concept of Self.

Peter Abelard, the medieval philosopher and composer, here gives a concise

but vivid survey of his notoriously calamitous life. The work is couched in the

form of a letter to an afflicted friend. Abelard's abrasively competitive, often

arrogant personality emerges at once in the brief Foreword, where he informs his

correspondent: "(I)n comparing your sorrows with mine, you may discover that

yours are in truth nought.. and so shall you come to bear them the more easily."

(Summary by Martin Geeson)

• Memoirs