Lifetime of Machaut (1 janv. 1300 – 1 janv. 1377)

Description:

Greatest French poet/composer of the 14th C.
Emerged from a bourgeois background, educated in Reims (important center of French Catholicism)

Became secretary to John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia at the age of 23; accompanied him on many military and diplomatic expeditions
In 1346, John was killed in battle

Many of his poems took the form of a dit, an allegorical story that referred to the nobility that Machaut knew (up to 9,000 lines)

Mass of Notre Dame is the first complete polyphonic setting of the entire Mass Ordinary by a single composer
Uses four voices throughout: tenor, contratenor (against the tenor), motetus, and triplum
In the Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei, he uses isorhythm = a practice in which a rhythmic pattern repeats independently of its pitches
Known as a talea in Machaut’s day
Imposed on tenor voice over an entire section or composition

Color = sequence of pitches that repeats independently of the rhythm
Intricacy of Mass achieved by overlapping talea and color