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• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Medieval Era
• Poet

(Ge-yom’ da Ma-sho’) c. 1300–77 French Composer and Poet Machaut was the most important poet-composer of fourteenth-century France and had a wide and enduring influence. He was in constant demand by the greatest noble patrons of his day, and his music reflects this patronage. He was unusual, although probably not unique, among medieval writers in that he made an ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Contemporary Classical

music which existed only in his head. He owes much to stylized ritual and theatre as well as to the heterophonic style of composers such as the fourteenth-century Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–77). He creates music that feels three-dimensional, shifting textures around to create audible sculptures. His naturally dramatic temperament has enabled him to make a remarkable contribution to both ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Medieval Era
• Theorist

(Yo-an’-nez Se-kon’-ya) c. 1370–1412 Franco-Flemish composer and theorist Ciconia was active principally in Italy. For many years he was regarded as the main link between Machaut and Du Fay, and although other influential composers have now come to the fore, he is still seen as one of the most important figures of his generation. He wrote songs in French and ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Medieval Era

cannot be overstated. Recommended Recording: Magister Leoninus: Sacred Music from the 12th Century, Red Byrd, Capella Amsterdam (Hyperion) Introduction | Medieval Era | Classical Personalities | Guillaume de Machaut | Medieval Era | Classical ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Medieval Era

essential characteristics in sometimes highly elaborate polyphonic settings. Principal among these forms was the motet, a complex polyphonic work for at least three voices. The motets of Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–77) are highly serious works, often featuring texts on secular subjects that he had written. He was the most celebrated composer of his day and one of its ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Renaissance

longer to emerge than in other arts, and are less conspicuous when they do. During the fifteenth century, composers continued to develop the techniques handed down to them by Machaut and his contemporaries. New Centres Of Excellence The main European centre of compositional excellence moved from northern France to Burgundy, an area that today would comprise Holland, Belgium ...

• Classical
• Medieval Era

population in 1348–49, and again in 1361–62. Fascinating details about life in France throughout these war- and plague-ravaged years are found in the works of the poet-composer Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–77). He was in the service of King John of Bohemia, who was killed at the Battle of Crécy in 1346. Machaut also witnessed and survived both outbreaks ...

• Influences
• Classical
• Medieval Era

keyboard music (c. 1360), a fragment containing arrangements of two motets from the Roman de Fauvel, a hymn and three estampies (dances); now in the British Library, London. Machaut manuscripts: six manuscripts (c. 1350 to c. 1390) representing his works from different periods of his career. Most are richly illuminated; some may have been made under his supervision. Five ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Medieval Era

The author of a fifteenth-century treatise wrote that Vitry ‘found [founded] the manner of motets, ballades, lais and simple rondeaux’, but none of his songs survives. However, Machaut, his younger contemporary, wrote well over 100 songs in which the short strophic forms of ballade, rondeau and virelai (known as the formes fixes) are clearly defined. ...

• Inside the Music
• Classical
• Medieval Era

Written in the early 1360s, Machaut’s Mass cycle sets all the movements of the Ordinary, the dismissal (Ite missa est), and its response. Although not all the movements are based on chant (the Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei and the dismissal are based on their respective plainchant melodies, in isorhythm, whereas the Gloria and Credo are ...