: 2010 23 Jan. 2017. Not at all here. Ultimately, it’s the perspicacity and skill of Guerber and his singers that makes this recording so successful and satisfying. The Messe de Nostre Dame Introduction: Music for the Mass in fourteenth-century France. Vie amoureuse et joie a Dieu commant. Aeon AECD 1093 : 1987 : 1996 In these genres, Machaut retained the basic formes fixes, but often utilized creative text setting and cadences. Listeners truly interested in Machaut and this seminal masterwork really should know this recording, whether or not they like it; most viable alternatives are more located in the expected realm of interpretation, but are not so passionately devoted to exploring the possibilities of Machaut’s Messe de Notre-Dame as this. 1. Overview. The voice singing the melody of an organum. “Machaut’s ‘Messe Notre-Dame’.” The Musical Quarterly, Vol. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. “The So-Called Cyclic Mass of Guillaume de Machaut: New Evidence for an Old Debate.” The Musical Quarterly, Vol. Puis qu’en oubli sui de vous, dous amis. The style of the conductus was usually rhythmic, as befitting music accompanying a procession, and almost always note-against-note. His works are preserved to a degree astonishing for the 14th century: there are manuscripts for hundreds of poems and some 145 musical works. Yet without drawing any teeth: the singers in Diabolus in Musica are real individuals performing as such. Biographical details also allow the works to be placed in a social context. At the end of his life, Machaut wrote a poetic treatise on his craft (his Prologue). All of these masses are anonymous, and musicological scholarship indicates that all of them are compilations of the works of several composers. French composer and poet. review Messe de Nostre Dame. Rec. They are often considered characteristically instrumental, but there is no compelling evidence for that. According to a rubric found at the Cathedral, it would have likely been performed for the Saturday Lady Mass. Although the textures which the ensemble consistently achieves are sonorous, they are neither fanciful, nor over-rich. In the Mass, isorhythm and diverse other compositional techniques of Machaut’s late period are brought together in one work that is outstanding in terms of artistic merit and belongs among the most impressive works of the Middle Ages. Probably educated in Reims, he entered the service of John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, as a royal secretary, c.1323. But the inclusion of instruments is not something that would have been done in Machaut’s time, and I am against the practice. Thank you. The celebrity of the Messe de Nostre Dame probably owes much to its place in musical history as the first extant complete mass setting by a single composer. The Hilliard Ensemble – Paul Hillier, dir. He also worked in the polyphonic forms of the ballade and rondeau and wrote the first complete setting of the Ordinary of the Mass which can be attributed to a single composer. My stance on this issue is changed and I have some reading to do. Naxos Early Music-Alte Musik 8.553833 Would love to hear back. It’s also an amazingly evocative, delicate and beautiful work, which benefits from an idiomatic approach and one equally light of touch. This gesture by Machaut imposed on the Ordinary a previously unconsidered abstract artistic idea, and potentially influenced composers throughout the ages to continue setting the Ordinary to stylistically coherent music. The musical evidence contains nothing to contradict the available historical evidence which suggests that the Machaut Mass is purely vocal.”. a poem not meant to be sung). Rec. Although Hildegard of Bingen was married to Count William of Poitiers, she loved the troubadour Raimbaut d'Orange, for whom she composed numerous chansons. Machaut probably was familiar with the Tournai Mass since Machaut’s Mass shares many stylistic features with it, including textless interludes. April 1377) was a Medieval French poet and composer. Summerly’s reading has the advantage of having been recorded in the very building where the Mass may first have been heard more than 600 years ago – Rheims Cathedral. Ensemble Organum’s version has a very grave interpretation that emphasizes the low voices and takes a very flexible approach to rhythm; even though we cannot call it “authoritative,” it certainly feels that way. Puis qu’en oubli sui de vous, dous amis, (Classical.net). Rec. her mystical compositions. (Allmusic.com). Other than his Latin motets of a religious nature and some poems invoking the horrors of war and captivity, the vast majority of Machaut’s lyric poems reflect the conventions of courtly love, and involve statements of service to a lady and the poet’s pleasure and pains. I will describe some that I think are among the best, as well as the most recent recordings. Guillaume de Machaut’s narrative output is dominated by the “dit” (literally “spoken,” i.e. Generally acclaimed the greatest composer of the 14th century is Guillaume de Machaut. true. Stylistically it was utterly different from the other principal liturgical polyphonic form of the time, organum, in which the voices usually moved at different speeds; in conductus, the voices sang together, in a style also known as discant. In the liturgy of the Mass, the items of the Ordinary are not performed consecutively, but are separated from one another by prayers and chants. The tone-quality here is more restrained than Parrott’s. Guilllaume de Machaut was "the last great poet who was also a composer," in the words of the scholar Daniel Leech-Wilkinson. : 1996 Anthologie sonore 31: AS 74; AS 75; AS 76; AS 77; [Paris]: L'Anthologie Sonore… As a composer of the fourteenth century, Machaut’s secular song output includes monophonic lais and virelais, which continue, in updated forms, some of the tradition of the troubadours. Machaut’s Mass, probably written in the early 1360s, was connected with the Reims celebration and on the death of his brother it was transformed into a memorial mass. Messe de Notre-Dame, dite du sacre de Charles V. Les Paraphonistes de St-Jean des Matines (choir and brass); Guillaume De Van, dir. However, the mass can be said to be stylistically consistent, and certainly the chosen chants are all celebrations of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Like so many other medieval composers, Machaut was both musician and poet. 204–224). The celebrity of the Messe de Nostre Dame probably owes much to its place in musical history as the first extant complete mass setting by a single composer. Guillaume de Machaut - Composer style: Medieval (Late) - Born: 1300 in Reims, France - Followed by 333 users - Top Work: Messe de Nostre Dame ], The foundational music of Christian worship in medieval Europe was Gregorian chant, which was monophonic, a single melodic line without accompaniment. View all posts by f. d. leone, “But the inclusion of instruments is not something that would have been done in Machaut’s time, and I am against the practice.”, Do you have any supporting evidence for this rather bold statement? Hyperion CDA 66 358 On this CD we get a robust and highly convincing interpretation from the ever enterprising eight-person (all male) French group, Diabolus in Musica, under their director Antoine Guerber. Guillaume de Machaut, sometimes spelt Machault (c.1300–1377), was an important mediaeval French poet and composer. Marcel Pérès and his group decided to vocally ornament the music, a feature for which there is no indication in the surviving sources in the Mass itself, nor historic support in what few treatises we have from Machaut’s century, the fourteenth. Rel. Standard-groove recording, 2 discs: 78 rpm, 12 in., monaural. Guillaume de Machaut: Messe de Nostre Dame Video January 26, 2020 Editor Leave a comment As we continue our perusal of Sacred Music, we turn to Guillaume de Machaut, the first known composer to write music for the entire Ordinary of the Mass. Early Music Vol. His Messe de Nostre Dame is the first complete setting of the Ordinary of the mass by a single composer that has survived. (See Keitel, E.A. . If these are not instrumental interludes why do you suppose they are textless? No attempt to submerge or efface their vocal personalities. [See “The Messe de Nostre Dame, Introduction: Music for the Mass in fourteenth-century France”, Website: Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300-1377), 23 Jan 2017