Guillaume de Machaut and Reims
Context and Meaning in his Musical Works

A study of Machaut, fourteenth-century French composer and poet, who wrote the first polyphonic Mass.

Anne Walters Robertson (Author)

9780521036085, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 March 2007

480 pages, 29 b/w illus. 14 tables 19 music examples
24.3 x 16.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.754 kg

'A real strength of this book is its wealth of careful research into culture and ideas … this skilful book has a somewhat hybrid quality. It presents a wealth of research about the cultural environment within which Machaut and his Reims contemporaries lived and provides extremely useful materials, such as complete texts and English translations of all the Machaut motets. But it also poses intriguing historiographic questions about interpretative reconstruction of a composer's motivations and intentions through circumstantial inferences - a difficult enough task even when there is more concrete documentary information than exists for Guillaume de Machaut … will resonate through scholarship for years to come.' Music and Letters

Guillaume de Machaut, renowned fourteenth-century French composer and poet, wrote the first polyphonic Mass and many other important musical works. Friend of royalty, prelates, noted poets and musicians, Machaut was a cosmopolitan presence in late medieval Europe. He also served as canon of the cathedral of Reims, an ancient and influential archiepiscopal see and the coronation site of French kings. This exploration of Machaut's life and work focuses on his music based on ecclesiastical chants: twenty-three motets, the David Hocket, and the Mass of Our Lady. The meaning of his music can often be understood through study of its context in fourteenth-century Reims. Machaut emerges as a composer deeply involved in the great crises of his day, one who skilfully and artfully expresses profound themes of human existence in ardent music and poetry.

List of figures
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations and conventions
Prologue: context and meaning in Guillaume de Machaut's musical works
Part I. Reims and its Music: Cathedral, City, Archdiocese: 1. Guillaume de Machaut in Reims
2. Canonical affirmation and resistance in Machaut's motets 18 and 19
Part II. Turned-About Love Songs: 3. Machaut's motets 1-17 and the medieval mystical tradition
4. The beginning of love's journey
5. The middle of love's journey: the struggle with sin
6. The end of love's journey: union with the beloved
Part III. Music of War, Kingship and Final Things: 7. Machaut's late motets and the Hundred Years War in Reims
8. Machaut's David Hocket and the coronation of Charles V (1364)
9. Machaut's Mass of Our Lady and composer remembrance through music
Epilogue: context, meaning and artistry in Machaut's music
Appendix A: documents
Appendix B: texts and translations of Machaut's motets
Appendix C: manuscripts consulted for the musical examples
Notes
Bibliography
Index of works by Machaut
Index of manuscripts
General index.

Subject Areas: Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], European history [HBJD], Medieval & Renaissance music [c 1000 to c 1600 AVGC2]