Summary
• poet & musician
• highly personalized
• life, experiences with the Black Death
• advancement of secular poetry
• self-preservatoin of his output
• complete & in order
• supposedly arranged chronologically
• complete repertoire
• fused impersonal w/ personal
• did not reject musical & poetic fixed forms entirely, but bent the
rules
• secular individual, w/ sacred position
Style
Melody: distinct phrases, small; long continuous melodic line, 4-bar phrases
Texture: 1) treble dominated: 3 vcs
2) equal voiced: 3-4 vcs
Vertical: 5ths, Octaves; close, many 3rds and 6ths; 2nds, 7ths, 9ths
Rhythm: duplum, syncopation, hocket
Mass
Context
• papal bull: against complicated polyphony, singers; "tone things down"
• efforts towards Mass composition
• 2 codex
• Mass came to mean 5-movement polyphonic composition
• turned to familiar styles:
1) motet-isorhythmic
2) song style-treble dominated
3) conductus-homophonic (simultaneous)
4) mixtures
Mass cycles: all compiled
• Mass of Turnai
• Mass of Toulouse
• Mass of Barcelona
• Sourbon Mass
Machaut's Mass has 4 voices
a. Lais-19
• 15 monophonic, 4 polyphonic ( ao ac ao ac)
• polyphonic lais are “chace”; intensely canonic
• attempt at modernizing lai, though no successors
• music is simpler than poetry
b. Motets: 23, which follow & develop procedures by de Vitry
• 6 in latin, remainder in French (regressive)
• 2 have fr triplum and ltn duplum
• 3 w/ Fr tenors; all other tenors have Latin incipits: chant origins
• 19 are 3-vc polytextual (double motets) above tenor; remaining 4 add textless
countertenor (5, 21-23)
• 6/8 (major prolation) predominates in upper vcs of 15 motets
c. Ballades-42
• more experimental types (#1 is isorhythmic, only fixed form)
• 2,3, 4 vcs (no 37 is monophonic)
• # 34 is double ballade (upper voices sing different texts)
• first 16 originally for cantus and tenor
• differ from trovere tradition in reduction to 3 stanzas
• stanzas have 7-8 lines with rhyme scheme (ababbcC or ababccdD)
• lines of 8-10 syllables
• 2 musical types: ballade simplex (37 of 42)ao ac b C
ballade duplex ao ac bo bc (2 sections)
d. Rondeaux-21
• 2-4 vcs; 2 parts predominate in earlier
• standardized poetic form: 8 line rondeau with lines of equal length: ABaAabAB
• a few 13 line rondeaus with similar musical form
AB B ab AB ab b AB B
A B a A a b A B
e. Virelais-25
• 25 of 33 are monophonic; 7 in 2 parts, # 26 has 3 parts
• simpler syllabic style
• AbbA bbaA bbaA