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Boy I am the "supreme representative of the Ars nova tradition" and you can't even remember what a chant is.

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Felt cute. Might go write 400 poems and 235 ballades later, idk😜😘

Chloe Kerr

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Give up on the secular world and focus on love. Trust me it works!
Breanna Walrath

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When you feel like the king of love but can't find it.

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Monks: Hear our groans with Thy holy ears, calmly forgive our crimes.

Machaut: Ah, Fortune, you are an abyss and a well to swallow up every man who dares believe you.
Monks:

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Congratulations Machaut, secretary of John of Luxembourg! The only person I know of whose work bonus was to "travel extensively for various battles and political events".

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Guillaume de Machaut (d.1377) is one of the undisputed pinnacle geniuses of Western music, and the most famous composer of the Middle Ages. Today his four-voice Mass of Notre Dame is a textbook example for medieval counterpoint, and has served sufficiently to maintain his reputation across shifts in fashion. However Machaut's work is extensive, with his French songs & poetry dominating the fourteenth century by both their quality and volume. A series of carefully prepared illuminated manuscripts, undertaken for members of the French royalty, preserve his complete artistic output. Along with these major sources, various pieces are duplicated in scattered sources throughout Europe. His life and work are thus extremely well-preserved for the period, and his position as the most distinguished composer of the century has never wavered.

Machaut was apparently born in the vicinity of Rheims in Champagne, around the year 1300. He is first known as the secretary of John of Luxembourg in 1323, and used the position to travel extensively for various battles and political events. In approximately 1340, Machaut returned to Rheims to take up the position of canon (he had previously been an absentee office-holder) together with his brother Jean. However, he continued to serve John of Luxembourg until the latter's death at Crécy in 1346, and then served his daughter Bonne, who appears in the Remède de Fortune. The remainder of the fourteenth century was an epic of wars and plagues, and one of the few periods in which the population of Europe declined, but Machaut's reputation continued to rise. He went on to serve two kings of France, and was charged with a task as important as accompanying hostages during the English war. In 1361 the Dauphine was received in Machaut's quarters, an exceptional event. By the 1370s Machaut's name was associated with Pierre de Lusignan, King of Cyprus, thus establishing his fame nearly as far as Asia.

Machaut is frequently portrayed today as an avant garde composer, especially because of his position with regard to the early Ars Nova (a new, more detailed rhythmic notation), but one must also emphasize the masterful continuity with which he employed established forms. While using the same basic formats, he made subtle changes to meter and rhyme scheme, allowing for more personal touches and a more dramatic presentation. Indeed, Machaut's poetry is one of the most impressive French outputs of the medieval era, serving as an example even for Chaucer. The theme of courtly love dominates his writing, becoming heavily symbolized in the guises of such characters as Fortune & Hope, and the personal dramas in which they act. Machaut's poetic output, and by extension the subset of texts he chose to set to music, is both personal and ritualized, lending it a timeless quality. Some of the love themes date to Ovid and beyond, from whom they had been elaborated first by the troubadours of Provence and then by the northern trouvères, and so it is truly a classical tradition to which they belong.

Machaut marks the end of the lineage of the trouvères, and with it the development of the monophonic art song in the West. This aspect of his work is found in the virelais and especially the lengthy lais. He also acted decisively to refine the emerging polyphonic song forms ballade & rondeau, and these were to become the dominant fixed forms for the following generations. What Machaut achieved so eloquently is an idiomatic and natural combination of words with music, forcefully compelling in its lyrical grace and rhythmic sophistication. His songs are immediately enjoyable, because he was able to shape the smallest melodic nuances as well as to conceive of forms on a large scale. The latter is reflected in his poetic-musical creations Le Remède de Fortune and Le Veoir Dit, as well as in his Messe de Notre Dame. One must not lose sight of Machaut's position within the sweep of medieval history, as his great "multimedia" productions had clear precedents in the Roman de la Rose and especially the Roman de Fauvel. It is Machaut's ability to unite cogent and elegant melodic thinking with the new rhythmic possibilities of the Ars Nova which ultimately makes his musical reputation.

Although he wrote music for more than one hundred of his French poems, and even for half a dozen motets in Latin, Machaut remains best-known for his Mass of Notre Dame. This mass was written as part of the commemoration of the Virgin endowed by the Machaut brothers at Rheims, and was intended for performance in a smaller setting by specialized soloists. The most striking aspect of the piece is not simply the high quality of the contrapuntal writing, but the architectural unity of the Ordinary sections as well. Machaut's mass is not the earliest surviving mass cycle (there are two which predate it), but it is the earliest by a single composer and indeed the earliest to display this degree of unity. While the chants used as cantus firmus do vary, opening gestures and motivic figures are used to confirm the cyclical nature of the work. Technique of this magnitude is frequently offered as evidence of Machaut's prescience, given the prominence of such forms a hundred or two hundred years later, but the musical quality of his cycle can be appreciated on its own terms. Indeed, the same can be said for Machaut's oeuvre as a whole. ~ Todd McComb, 4/98

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Classical Net - Basic Repertoire List - Machaut

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The Classical Net web site offers a comprehensive collection of information and news on classical music subjects including articles and CD reviews, composers and their music, the basic repertoire, recommended recordings and a CD buying guide.

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When that new chanson be hittin different.

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I’m trying to outdo my brother with my faunce and passion for music, but I’m missing his natural talent for the realms.

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No one:

Machaut: *writing his 213th chanson for the girl who won’t even look in his direction*

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Hi! I'm Guillame de Machaut! I wrote Mass of Notre Dame. I'm so famous people don't even know excatly where I was born...

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when Mass of Notre Dame is all the rage and its not even your fave

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When you have to accompany hostages but all you want to do is write love songs 

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When you have to accompany hostages but all you want to do is write love songs 

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Olivia Tolman

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Imagine being known for choral music, and you haven't even written a piece for a thousand voices.

#MahlerGang

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The feeling when John doesn't like the chanson you spent days on.

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The feeling when John doesn't like the chanson you spent days on.

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Will the REAL Guillaume De Machaut Please Stand Up.

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Will the REAL Guillaume De Machaut Please Stand Up.

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When you write over a hundred French poems and half a dozen Motets but all people remember is that you wrote about a massive lady.

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When all she does is listen to anime intros because The Messe de Nostre Dame is "too polyphonic"

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When someone asks for a copy of the book you wrote by hand

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When you worked hard to receive a master of arts degree but historians say your evidence is weak:

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When you worked hard to receive a master of arts degree but historians say your evidence is weak:

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The face you make when your birthplace is also the name of your favorite drink champagne
Aaron Quinton

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Writing more than one hundred French poems for your crush be like:

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Seducing the ladies with my chansons like...

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When you get labeled "one of the undisputed pinnacle geniuses of Western music."

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When you're so good at writing music you end the era of the trouvères...

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when you're the  undisputed pinnacle geniuses of Western music
#blessed

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That moment when you had to go travel to another location with the king, but you just wanted to stay and write your secular music in peace.

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when you write a chanson for ur crush and she still doesn't love you...

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POV: Your Guillaume de Machaut's assistant and you just informed him hes one of the few to survive the plague

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Trying to slide into the DM's with one of Machaut's poems like...
Colby Schramel

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To be honest guys it feels like no one is helping me write and develop music! We are in the middle of a life changing transition in music and apparently no one else seems to know how to write music!

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When you composed the entire 14th century poems and no one from the 21st remembers you

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When you write Notre-Dame but she's Not'yr-Dame

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When everyone is dying from plagues and wars but at least the survivors think your music slaps

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I served two French kings, but I must never Machaut it to the king
#realivesmatter

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Always working Post made by Jessica Jones

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Always working Post made by Jessica Jones

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John of Lexumberg always wants something different. #nobreak

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If you wanted some dirt on England just ask Machaut he was the man. He chilled with their hostages.

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Just give up on the secular world and focus on love. It works better!

Breanna Walrath

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The face you make when your music is “dominating” for its quality and volume #toocool

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When you find out that you've been named the greatest composer of the 14th century.

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So, I got stood up for my date tonight. Feeling sad. I'm thinking about writing a song about it.
#Dame,sevousn'avezaparceü
(Lady, if you never appear)

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Whoever keeps reporting my posts, keep one thing in mind. The KING is my BEST FRIEND we used to travel together. If you cross me on here ONE MORE TIME I will REPORT YOU and he will EXECUTE YOU publicily. That's right, try and mess with me again idiot. #owned #brexit #JohnofBohemia

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(Hannah Austin)
Who writes poems about the Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War, how depressing...... oh wait

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Yo can everyone stop calling me Guilluame?? HE AINT REAL!!!#atme

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When nothing is known for certain about his family or social status, except that he had a brother, Jean, who like him became a canon of Reims cathedral.

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Been writing poetry about my 18 year old girl all day.
#ageisjustanumber #18goingon60
#you'ddatean18yearoldtooifyourpoemswerethisfire

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The face you make when during your life you're admired by Chaucer but no one in the 21st century remembers who you are.
Jackson LaBaugh

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This post was made by Elizabeth  Whaley 

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This post was made by Elizabeth  Whaley 

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In April 1377 France's greatest poet-musician, Guillaume de Machaut, was buried in Reims cathedral. Eighty years later King René d'Anjou, a passionate writer himself and a great patron of the arts, evoked in Le Livre du Coeur d'Amour Épris ('The Book of the Love-Smitten Heart', 1457) Machaut's imaginary tomb amidst those of five other famous love poets on the 'cemetery of unhappy lovers', behind the 'Ospital d'Amours' ('Love's hospital'). His tombstone was 'made wholly of fine silver and all around were inscriptions in blue, green and violet enamel, and incised were well-notated chansons, as well as virelais, serventoys, lays and motets, made and composed in various ways'.

A tangible monumental 'tombstone' survives in the six manuscripts that contain all of Machaut's compositions, literary and musical: an exceptional heritage, the more so as the author himself supervised the making of at least one of these costly books, which were destined for his various noble patrons. For no other medieval composer do we possess so many works in authoritative versions. And indeed, in their parchment are 'incised' many well-notated chansons, virelais, lays, and motets, composed in various ways.

In the Prologue which Machaut, late in life, added as an introduction to his works, he tells how Lady Nature created him in order that he should create many and varied new forms, small and large, and how the God of Love offered him the subject-matter for these works. Both this personal statement and King René's description emphasize the pursuit of variety within Machaut's poetical and musical oeuvre. He wrote in all the existing literary and musical forms and was a great explorer of polyphony in the traditionally monophonic song genres. Variation and inventiveness are found not only in the forms but also in the rhymes and metres of his poetry, as well as in puns and plays with the sound of words. In his music, typical small four-note motifs alternating with larger leaps are strung together to form long expressive melodies, which, in polyphony, combine into a colourful harmonic mosaic, occasionally peppered with biting dissonances.

Although the Messe de Notre Dame is perhaps Machaut's best-known work, the predominant subject in his oeuvre is courtly love, with all its sufferings and-less often-joys. Bad luck in love, often personified in the figure of Lady Fortune, is ever-present in Machaut's poetry and many times he set his ponderings about her capricious behaviour to music in a plaintive song, lay or motet. The present recording begins and ends with such a ballade, in which, unusually, both her positive and her negative sides come into view. In the grand 'Lay de confort', also recorded here, she plays a dominant role. Consolation for Fortune's blows can only be found by trusting in Hope, the dous mire ('gentle physician') of unhappy lovers, as he is called in the Lay.

Ballade 23, De Fortune, which opens the album, is a surprising piece of music and apparently one of the more popular of Machaut's songs, since it is found in a wide range of manuscripts. Its subject is a lady's complaint about Fortune, who initially favoured her so much that, according to the refrain, no 'woman so well provided for' could ever be found. Her happiness is not stable, however, since Fortune now threatens to destroy it. Machaut's way of composing with small melodic motifs comes particularly clearly to the fore in this ballade. The frequent syncopations in the upper voice (the triplum) and the cantus betray Fortune's slippery and untrustworthy character. The tenor has a strange, disjointed beginning, consisting of repeated notes broken off by rests. The last track of the recording presents the first verse of a version from a posthumous manuscript, in which a fourth voice, a contratenor, has been added, surely by a later composer. The listener may compare the two versions and judge whether the angular new contratenor with its repeated fifths enriches or obscures Machaut's original version.

Whereas ballades have a refrain of a single recurring line at the end of each stanza, and have lost their original dance character, virelais (which Machaut preferred to call 'chansons baladees') are indeed dancing songs with a lively rhythm and short phrases. The virelai's refrain is sung at the beginning and end of the piece, and between each of its three stanzas, and was perhaps intended to be sung by a company of dancers, while a soloist would sing the couplets with new text in between the refrains. Virelais can also be sung in their entirety by a soloist, as with all three of the examples on this album. In virelai 10, De bonté, de valour, the poet seems entirely carefree. It features abundant praise of the lady's beauty and goodness, sung to a tender, longing melody. The dominant iambic (short-long) rhythm is typical for virelais.

The two-voice ballade 7, J'aim miex languir, probably an early work, has that same catchy iambic rhythm as the virelai and shares much of its character, but an essential difference is the extended melisma on the refrain line, perhaps to reflect the word 'dure' ('harsh') in the first stanza. The melisma is prepared by a shorter one, also on the syllable '-dure' (of 'endure'), but which ends on an open consonance where the refrain melody leads to a definitive closure. Its subject is the lover's complaint about his lady's unrelenting cruelty.

The rondeau is the most intimate of the chanson types, often built on double meanings and puns in the text. Rondeau 19, Quant ma dame les maus d'amer m'aprent, is a late work, in which Machaut plays with the rhyme-sounds '-prent' and '-prendre'. The text seems rather straightforward-if the lady can teach the ills of love, she could also teach its joys-but that might be misleading. As often in rondeaux, it may hide a verbal riddle, alluded to by the words 'it's easy enough to understand', probably enclosed in the double meaning of 'amer' as 'to love' and 'bitter', contrasting with the hoped-for sweetness. Metrically this rondeau is rather complex because it superposes three different metres in its three voices: 6/8, 3/4, and 2/4 (to use their modern equivalents).

Virelai 18, Helas! et comment aroie, is a complaint about a separation from the lady. Large melodic leaps in its couplets express the lover's desperate feelings.

A playful use with significant rhyme occurs in the only motet recorded here, Maugré mon cuer / De ma dolour / Quia amore langueo: an emphatic repetition of the rhyme-sound '-ment' ('mentir' meaning 'to lie') characterizes the beginning of the motet. The subject of this complex work is the despair of a lover who tries in vain to conceal his lovesickness. Although people around him pretend he's enjoying love and make him sing about it, the opposite is true: he has never received any sign of love from his lady, and therefore everyone can see that he was lying when he sung about his happiness. The motetus provides an example of such a false song: after a long summing-up of the lover's good fortune, he has to confess in the end that he has been lying through his teeth the whole time. The tenor, a fragment from a Marian antiphon with words from the Song of Songs, reveals the truth: 'For I languish with love.' The short tenor melody, the basis of the motet, is repeated exceptionally often: six times. It is dominated by the triad F-A-C, and the true mode of the motet, G, only reveals itself in the final consonance of the motet, as a musical parallel to the lover's revelation of his having lied.

The motet is followed by a folksong-like virelai, Je vivroie liement, in binary metre and with brisk short phrases. According to its text the lover would live joyfully if his lady knew that in her his only cure is found. In ballade 16, Dame, comment qu'amez de vous ne soie, the lover expresses his fear that his lady will prefer another, by which she would sign his death warrant. The song has a very poignant beginning: the singer seems barely able to utter a word, as his hesitant first notes are interrupted by rests. The melody then unfolds in broad gestures of great expressivity and with a subtly varied movement. The frequent breaks in the melodic flow betray the lover's despair.

The lay was known as the most ambitious poetical genre, demanding maximal inventiveness from its maker. Its normal structure consists of twelve double stanzas, of which only the last has the same rhymes and melody as the first. All the other stanzas should have different melodies, rhymes, and varied metres. S'onques dolereusement, called 'Le lay de confort', is a Boethian reflection on how one can resist ill fortune by trusting to Hope. The challenge which Machaut posed himself in this particular lay lies in its musical structure as an enormous series of twelve chaces -canons for three voices. In each of the stanzas, Machaut plays with a different pair of end-rhyme sounds. The effect of the canonic structure is that the rhyme sounds follow each other three times in quick succession and sometimes coincide in two of the voices. The compositional idea behind the repeating canon structure was probably to evoke the eternal rotation of Fortune's wheel. Machaut divided the lay into three equal parts, characterized by a different mensuration for each set of four stanzas: 6/8, 3/4, and back to 6/8; the resulting changes in pulse mark important turning points in the meaning of the text.

In the first stanza of the lay, as is the tradition, the persona of the poet explains the motivation for its composition: the poet's mistreatment at the hands of Fortune. The text expands on a long digression about Fortune's evil character. It is not until the fifth stanza, where the metre changes to 3/4, that the poet reveals that she is a lady, who tries to console her imprisoned lover by imploring him to trust in Hope, who did so much to console the lady herself. In stanza IX, where the metre changes back to the initial 6/8, she confesses to be not entirely certain whether she is the only one for her lover; if he were unfaithful (like Fortune), that would kill her. However, she prefers to trust in Hope and to remain steadfast in her feelings. In the last stanza the lady urges her friend to act likewise and to pray to God devoutly.

This truly monumental piece shows Machaut's art of variation at its pinnacle, but each of his pieces was given its own particular character and flavour. Thanks to the care he took to have his works preserved in beautiful manuscripts, we can still be enticed and moved by Machaut's colourful and captivating poetic and musical art, even at a distance of seven centuries.

Jacques Boogaart © 2018

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In April 1377 France's greatest poet-musician, Guillaume de Machaut, was buried in Reims cathedral. Eighty years later King René d'Anjou, a passionate writer himself and a great patron of the arts, evoked in Le Livre du Coeur d'Amour Épris ('The Book of the Love-Smitten Heart', 1457) Machaut's imaginary tomb amidst those of five other famous love poets on the 'cemetery of unhappy lovers', behind the 'Ospital d'Amours' ('Love's hospital').

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Machaut composed "Li enseignement" in the 14th century. I likewise am completing my "enseignment" but in the 21st century for Sis. Crawford's class :)

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I saw this big woman a while ago. Decided to write about her, calling it “Mass of Our Lady”. People thought I wrote it for the church cause they’re using it in Mass now.

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Machaut: Writes one of the most famous mass of Notre Dame

France: makes you a stamp

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Adios trouvéres, welcome to the polyphonic wild west!

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When you survive the Black Death but can't even write write a fugue because you were born before the Baroque period

Jackson LaBaugh

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Ehllo mah broodahs, we must find deh noo wae, to write deh poems. I will make it ez to get used to, do not worry, only subtle will be deh changes to deh wae. You do not know deh wae, you must change rhyme and meter to know deh wae.

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Honest accounts of love affairs

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Machaut and da boys throwing it back to that fire new chanson

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Machaut and da boys throwing it back to that fire new chanson

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When you change the history of music as we know it but history doesn't even know if you came from a landowning family or not.

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I come from the language of love.  Should I write it out for you... In a poem?  Nah... Too easy Ill just make Piece about it. I am the greats of the greats! The almighty Frenchmen.

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When you write over a hundred French poems and half a dozen Motets but people remember you for writing about a massive lady.

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YOYOYO this is your bro Machaut. I'm a poet and I didn't even know it. Jk I did know it. One of my most popular works to date is Fortune's Child. So much better than Destiny's Child. Am I right?
Courtesy of Brianna Thyberg

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When you write 400 poems, including 235 ballades, 76 rondeaux, 39 virelais, 24 lais, 10 complaintes, and 7 chansons royales
#weirdflexbutok

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I'm kind of a big deal but I'm really just an average guy...looking for love...writing about love...singing about love... #keepingitreal #RHEIMS #classof1318

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I prefer my own words to that of a fiendish "space cowboy"...check back for original lyrics