Page 39 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

EARLY MUSIC 1000–1400 37

See also: Magnus liber organi 28–31 ■ Missa l’homme armée 42 ■ Missa Pange
lingua 43 ■ Canticum Canticorum 46–51 ■ Monteverdi’s Vespers 64–69

(“even more subtle art”). Ars nova
had become established and
went on to form the basis for the
development of rhythmic notation
in Western music.
Certain disciples of the
new art are preoccupied Changing the Mass
with their measured De Vitry’s ideas found perhaps
dividing up of beats … We their greatest flowering in the
forbid these methods. music of Guillaume de Machaut,
Pope John XXII a 14th-century composer and Guillaume de Machaut
poet. Machaut used the same
isorhythmic techniques in his own Born in the Champagne
motets and in the Kyrie, Sanctus, region of France around 1300,
Agnus Dei, and Ite, missa est Machaut spent much of his
movements of his Messe de Notre life in and around the nearby
Dame, the first known setting of city of Reims. After taking
Vitry took a series of notes in the polyphonic music for a complete holy orders, in 1323 he joined
tenor voice (called the color) and Mass cycle by a single composer. the household of John of
applied a rhythmic pattern (called As well as using isorhythm to Luxembourg, King of Bohemia,
a talea) to it. The talea (rhythm) unify elements of the Mass, traveling with him around
was usually shorter than the color Machaut also employed a plainsong Eastern Europe and Italy as
(melody) so it might require several cantus firmus (“fixed song”) as a his chaplain and secretary.
cycles of the talea to equal one linking melody for each movement, Through King John, Machaut
acquired lucrative benefices
repetition of the color. from which other melodies develop, as canon of the cathedrals at
The Church was not enamored and added a contratenor to raise Verdun in 1330, Arras in 1332,
of Ars nova, and Pope John XXII the number of voices from three and in Reims in 1337.
condemned it in a decree of 1323. (the traditional number) to a richer After King John’s death
The clergy were alarmed by the and more expansive four. at the Battle of Crécy in 1346,
style’s role in the secularization Machaut secured his artistic Machaut found further
of the once purely sacred motet, heritage by carefully managing his patronage from Bonne of
which was now appropriated as a own output, collecting his works Luxembourg, the second
way to comment on events of the in manuscripts that he compiled daughter of King John the
day. The satirical poem Le roman during his lifetime. Besides Blind, and Charles II, King
de Fauvel (c. 1316), for example, his importance as a composer, of Navarre in Spain. The
contains 130 musical works, Machaut was one of the greatest composer’s final years were
including five motets by de Vitry. French poets of the medieval spent in Reims, overseeing
Despite the religious opposition, period, producing extensive poetic the compilation of his works.
the precision of the new notation narratives in the form of lais (lines He died in 1377 and was
buried in Reims cathedral.
opened the door to experiments of verse with eight syllables) and
in rhythm and meter. These can dits (verse without music). He
be heard in the intricate and also developed shorter poetic Other key works
shifting rhythms of the songs of genres with repeated phrases,
the Italians Matteo da Perugia or refrains, such as the ballade, c. 1330s Douce dame jolie
(virelai)
and Philippus de Caserta and the rondeau, and virelai, which became c. 1340s Rose, liz, printemps,
French composer Baude Cordier popular vehicles of expression verdure (rondeau)
(all working around 1400), in a style for poets and composers of c.1340s Voir dit
that is now known as Ars subtilior subsequent generations. ■

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