MAC HALE, JOHN

MAC HALE, JOHN. - Irish prelate, b. 6 March 1791 at Tobbernavine, d. 7 Nov. 1881 at Tuam. He studied at Maynooth College and, after ordination, taught theology there. He was coadjutor to the bishop of Killala. In him, an unyielding doctrinal intransigence was coupled with a vivid patriotic sense: alongside O’Connell, he was the best-known of the Irish nationalists.

He rarely used English, the language of the oppressors, personally contributing translations into Irish to keep national sentiment alive. In the matter of education, he opposed the establishment of mixed schools. He came to Rome in 1831. Three years later he was elected archbishop of Tuam; when in 1852 Newman arrived in Dublin as rector of the new Catholic University, M. H. was not overly enthusiastic about this appointment, seeing in Newman not only an ex-Protestant and an Oxford man, but an Englishman. In 1854 he was again in Rome for the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and presented to the Pope a poem in Irish on the Immaculate Conception. He translated the Pentateuch and the first eight books of the Iliad into Irish. In the island’s language he also wrote a diocesan catechism. At the Vatican Council he was among those who considered the definition of papal infallibility inopportune.

MACHaut (Machault), GUILLAUME. - Poet and musician, b. c. 1300 at Machaut (Champagne), d. 1377 as canon of the cathedral of Reims.

Besides his rich output of secular works—lais, virelais, chansons, ballades, rondeaux, notated ballades—in which the most distinctive aspect of his art is to be found, he also composed 23 motets for 3 and 4 parts on Latin and French texts, in which the typical isorhythmic construction predominates; this is also noted in a ballade and in a rondeau, and a hoquetus on the word David inserted into the liturgical text Alleluia, Nativitas ex stirpe David, a piece in which some have wished to see a derivation from the organum triplum of Pérotin, based on the same Alleluia. Yet the work worthy of special remembrance is the Messe de Nostre Dame for four voices, the first example of a polyphonic mass composed entirely by a single author (the only previous historical instance, the Tournai Mass, being a compilation of pieces by various composers written at different times). The Mass has, besides the historical value of priority in its genre, the primacy of an aesthetic ideal of beauty.

The Mass combines various types of composition, from the fugal style with imitations and repetitions found in the Kyrie, to the conductus form typical of the Gloria; while in the Credo, free of any melisma because of the dogmatic nature of the text, great and solemn chords are woven against a background of Gregorian chant; in the Sanctus and Agnus Dei the thematic material of the Gregorian Mass (now no. XVII of the Vatican edition) becomes in a more concrete way the melodic basis of a compositional procedure that has all the stylistic characteristics of the isorhythmic motet, so much so that the entire Mass has been rightly called “a gigantic motet” (L. Lachs). The Mass has recently been printed (1949) under the care of the American Institute of Musicology in Rome (Corpus mensurabilis musicae, 2) in the transcription by G. de Van. Already eminent historians had published notable portions of it, and Chailley had issued a practical transcription (1948). The motets and other works are found scattered in about 37 manuscripts in the libraries of Paris, Chantilly, Florence, Padua, Modena, etc.