MACHAUT (MACHAULT), GUILLAUME. - Poet and musician, b. ca. 1300 at Machaut (Champagne). A cleric in 1323, he died in 1377 as canon of the cathedral of Reims.
Besides the rich production of secular works, lais, virelais, chansons ballades, rondeaux, ballades notées, in which lies the most peculiar aspect of his art, he also composed 23 motets for 3 and 4 parts on Latin and French texts, in which the typical isorhythmic workmanship predominates, which is likewise noticeable in a ballade and a rondeau, and a hoquetus on the word David inserted into the liturgical text Alleluja, Nativitas ex stirpe David, a piece in which some have wished to see a derivation from the organum triplum of Perotinus, based on the same Alleluja. The work, however, deserving of particular remembrance is the Messe Notre Dame for 4 voices, the first example of a polyphonic Mass composed entirely by a single author (the only historical precedent, in fact, the Messe de Tournai, was a gathering of pieces by various composers, written at different times). The Messe has, besides the historical value of priority in its genre, that of an aesthetic primacy of ideal beauty.
The Messe brings together various genres of composition, from the fugal one, with imitations and repetitions found in the Kyrie, to that typical of the conductus form in the Gloria; while in the Credo, free from any melisma because of the dogmatic nature of the text, great and solemn chords are woven together, against which the Gregorian melody forms a background; in the Sanctus and in the Agnus Dei the thematic material of the Gregorian Messe (today 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, just as the whole Messe was rightly defined as "a gigantic motet" (L. Lachs). The Messe was printed recently (1949) under the care of the American Institute of Musicology in Rome (Corpus mensurabilis musicae, 2) in G. de Vau's transcription. Already distinguished historians had published notable portions of it, and Chailley had issued a transcription of it for practical use (1948). The motets and the other works are scattered through some 37 codices in the libraries of Paris, Chantilly, Florence, Padua, Modena, etc.
Bibliography7 works
Luisa Cervelli