Did you know that Guillaume de Machaut was both a French poet and Musician? While not commonly known, his poetry is known for its puns, vivid imagery and encryptions. In the realm of music, Machaut influenced the forms fixes of the virelai, rondeau, ballade and inspired poets and composers of this time to write for this genre. Machaut is also known for the first polyphonic setting of the Mass Ordinary as a coherent cycle. (Evans 2013) A major catalyst of the time, Machaut’s “Messe de Nostre Dame” features fourteenth-century polyphonic music, which influenced later composers of the time.
Guillaume de Machaut (~1300-1377) was born in Northern France. He was a leading composer of the French Ars Nova movement, and also expanded upon the concept of motets. He also made the first solo polyphonic cycle of the Mass Ordinary (Evans 2013) Machaut is primarily known for his work of Messe de Nostre Dame, the first polyphonic setting of the Mass Ordinary as a coherent cycle.
In Messe de Nostre Dame, Machaut is attributed to a single, named composer for his composition of a single cycle mass, whereas other fourteenth century cycles are anonymous, or are thought to have been assembled from the repertoires of several composers, or both. Machaut presented this mass as a canon of Reims Cathedral primarily as a votive mass in honour of the Virgin Mary. All of the movements are based on a plainchant version of the appropriate element of the Ordinary. An example is seen in the “Kyrie” from Messe de Nostre Dame.
Fig 1.1
The talea of the tenor in the first “Kyrie” is extremely brief (four measures). The melodic color that states the pitches exactly is only stated once, and the use of the contratenor is unique considering its talea in the first “Kyrie” is much longer. It is stated fully from measures 1-25, but somewhat reinforced in the last 2 measures. The duplum and triplum move freely in more rapid rhythms. The melodic character includes large leaps and frequent syncopation throughout. Machaut formulated a mature style of motet and ballade composition by the middle of the fourteenth century, and that the presence in the movements Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, and Ite, missa est are hallmarks of that style. Paired with the evidence of the mid- fourteenth-century copying of its most reliable source, the manuscript Vogue, supports such a general chronology. For these movements, there is also a lack of poetic text, but more of an upper-voice melody, a clarity of harmony, with chords organized into larger units. This piece is considered polyphonic due to every part having their own independent rhythm. But, what makes it unique is the use of the countertenor, the similarities between the parts of the mass and the mass as a whole to other masses, and the stylistic features seen. The Gloria and Credo sections of this mass are written without the liturgical cantus firmus (long notes derived from plainchant, usually in the tenor part, around which the other polyphonic voice-parts weave), and are in the style of the equal-voiced polyphonic conductus. He associates the homophonic, rhythmically-simple motion of its Gloria and Credo movements with the Ars antiqua, and the isorhythmic intricacies of its four other movements with the Ars Nova, suggesting that Machaut intentionally cultivated both primitivism and modernity in a single work in order to display his exceptional compositional skill. Parts are set in a predominantly syllabic-conductus-like fashion (note against note), whereas the latter are set in the style of an isorhythmic motet. Another device which Machaut uses here (as in many of his secular works) is the hocket, a mode of writing in which melodic lines are fragmented between two or more voice parts, giving the effect of notes or clusters of notes being ‘thrown’ from one part to another, creating a marked contrast to the otherwise fluid polyphonic density.
Kyrie eleison; Lord, have mercy;
Christe eleison; Christ, have mercy;
Kyrie eleison; Lord, have mercy.
One of Machaut’s later influences was Geoffrey Chaucer, an English writer known for writing “The Canterbury Tales.” Both men had met on travel and Chaucer was known for imitating ideas of Machaut’s poetry. Chaucer later developed greater use of the third than continental Europeans, and used it to fulfill smoothness and richness.
Even in the works of Chaucer, readers of medieval English poetry hear reports of his mentor, Guillaume de Machaut. Although the degree to which Chaucer had a musical interest is uncertain, the logic behind his similarities in style compared to Machaut is not difficult to find. As seen in Chaucer’s ballads, their repeated melodic devices seem to have the force of motifs associated with certain emotions that are suggested but inadequately expressed in the verse. Chaucer learned to see poetry by trying to “frame it”, and to get underneath or to present it to a previously characterized observer. In “The Canterbury Tales”, the cantabile line is rarely self-sufficing; it is part of the comedy even though a section of the text may not be immediately comic.
Machaut’s influences are also seen in the Trecento music of the Gradual of Santa Maria Maggiore. It is said that some features of this Gradual are connected to the “Gloria” of the Messe de Nostre Dame. The upper voice is fully texted and supported by a slowly moving tenor that only intersects to some degree.
Machaut’s work is also influenced by his poetic successor, Eustache Deschamps. Deschamps did not set his ballades to music; in the Art de faire chansons, he gives the name “musique naturele” to the ‘music of poetry’, music of the speaking voice, as distinct from what he calls the musique artificiel of the accompanied singer. Deschamps is also known for extending the range of subject-matter and tone o the ballade to a degree which would prove as perplexing to a musician that sets their own text.
Finally, there is a connection between Messe de Nostre Dame and Tarik O’ Regan’s “Scattered Rhythms.” In “Scattered Rhythms”, there are sections that are seen in Machaut’s mass, including dissonances, open fourths and fifths, syncopation and accented motives. O’ Regan manipulates Machaut’s harmonic process by altering the rhythms. In Messe de Nostre Dame, the harmony shifts regularly from open fourths and fifths into a dense harmonic texture of seconds and sevenths. O’ Regan shifts between textures, but slows the harmonic process and makes it between unisons, fifths, and clustered textures. He also does not simply copy Machaut’s harmonic process, but rather fuses Machaut’s harmonic ideas with rhythmic ideas of his own, often changing harmonies on unexpected beats and unstressed beats.
Example 1. Guillaume de Machaut, Messe de Nostre Dame, Kyrie, mm. 63-66
Fig 2. Guillaume de Machaut, Messe de Nostre Dame, Kyrie, mm. 63-66
In this example, the relation close to the cadential points show a cross relation just to the prior chord of the cadence (G Natural- G Sharp), which completes one section of the Kyrie. It is also placed as a transition from one section to another (B –flat, B-natural). O’Regan combines two sections simultaneously, without stopping, placing a cross relation at the climax. Machaut uses the cross relation to bring significance to the cadential point O’ Regan uses it to create intensity, while taking us to another tonal center , sixteen measures later.
In conclusion, Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame was a major catalyst of the time, and his music influenced later composers both of the time or even in the 20th Century. This mass has left an impact on the realm of Music History, and Without Chaucer, we would have lost all of this mass structure and ideas that Machaut had introduced.
Bibliography
Bonds, Mark Evan. A History of Music in Western Culture. 4th ed. New York, NY : Pearson, 2013.
Bonds, Mark Evan. “Part 1: Antiquity and Medieval .” In Anthology of Scores for A History of Music in Western Culture. 4th ed. Vol. 1. New York, NY: Pearson, 2014.
Campbell, Thomas P. “Machaut and Chaucer: “Ars Nova” and the Art of Narrative.” The Chaucer Review24, no. 4 (1990): 275-89. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25094133.
Kittredge, G. L. “Guillaume De Machaut and the Book of the Duchess.” PMLA 30, no. 1 (1915): 1-24. doi:10.2307/457001.
LaBarr, C. F. (2011). Ancient musical ideas through a twenty-first century lens: An examination of tarik O’regan’s “Scattered rhymes” and its relationship to guillaume de machaut’s “Messe de notre dame” (Order No. 3506977). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (1012371741). Retrieved from http://proxy-iup.klnpa.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1012371741?accountid=11 652
Leech-Wilkinson, Daniel., and Guillaume. Machaut’s Mass : An Introduction. Oxford : New York: Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press, 1990.
Linklater, Christina. 2000. Guillaume de machaut’s “Messe de nostre dame” in the context of fourteenth-century polyphonic music for the mass ordinary. Order No. MQ57131, University of Ottawa (Canada). In PROQUESTMS ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, http://proxy-iup.klnpa.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/304665619?accountid=116 52.
Lucas, Heidi. “Music History 301 HW2.” Lecture, How was Polyphony Used?, Indiana University of PA, Indiana, Septermber 7, 2017.
Mahrt, William. “Reviews: The Spiritual Ascent of Machaut – “Guillaume De Machaut and Reims: Context and Meaning in His Musical Works,” by Anne Walters Robertson.” Sacred Music 133, no. 2 (Summer, 2006): 35-6, http://proxy- iup.klnpa.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1203163?accountid=11652.
Preston, Raymond. “Chaucer and the Ballades Notées of Guillaume De Machaut.” Speculum 26, no. 4 (1951): 615-23. doi:10.2307/2853054.
Robertson, Anne Walters. Guillaume de Machaut and Reims: context and meaning in his musical works. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Rosemary Morris. “Machaut, Froissart, and the Fictionalization of the Self.” The Modern Language Review 83, no. 3 (1988): 545-55. doi:10.2307/3731281.
TANGARI, N. (2015). Mensural and polyphonic music of the fourteenth century and a new source for the credo of tournai in a gradual of the basilica di santa maria maggiore in rome. Plainsong & Medieval Music, 24(1), 25-69. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0961137115000029
The editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Guillaume de Machaut.” Encyclopedia Britannica.March 22, 2016. Accessed October 2, 2017. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Guillaume-de-Machaut.