Guillaume de Machaut
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Guillaume de Machaut (also Machault; * between 1300 and 1305; † April 13, 1377 in Reims ) was a French composer and poet of the Middle Ages .
Life and literary creation
Machaut's date and place of birth are not known for certain. Presumably he came from the Reims area, from the Ardennes village of Machault , as the son of a non-aristocratic family, but they were clearly wealthy enough to give him a good education. After studying at the cathedral school in Reims, around 1323 he entered the service of Duke John of Luxembourg , who was also King of Bohemia , Margrave of Moravia and Duke of Silesia and whom he served as secretary on his many trips through his territories and on numerous campaigns accompanied. Thanks to him, in 1333, although never ordained a priest, he was eligible for a profitable canon mortgage in the cathedral chapter of Reims, which he occupied in 1337. He stayed here mainly from around 1340, although he continued to roam a lot.
When in 1346 Johann in the Anglo-French battle of Crécy on the side of Philip VI. died of France , Machaut entered the service of Jutta von Luxemburg , Johann's daughter and Philip's daughter-in-law. When Jutta died in 1349, Machaut was renowned enough as a poet that he no longer needed a permanent position next to his canon donation. Rather, he easily joined various princely patrons , such as the French Crown Prince Karl (King as Charles V 1364-1380) or his art-loving younger brother, Duke Johann von Berry († 1416), at whose courts he made guest appearances and whom he - of course against Pay - dedicated his works.
Machaut's literary work consists on the one hand of mostly shorter, mostly allegorical verse narratives and novels, which usually use the first-person form and have many autobiographical elements. He also tried his hand at the genre verse-chronicle with La Prize d'Alexandrie , a report of the (temporary) conquest of Alexandria in 1365, which he wrote 1370-1371 in honor of the 1369 murdered conqueror Pierre de Lusignan , King of Cyprus . Above all, however, he was a very productive lyric poet who reflected his art, of whom 234 ballads, 76 rondeaus and around 100 other poems have survived. The main subject of this poetry, which formally and thematically predominantly in the wake of courtly poetry of the 12th / 13th centuries. Century, the minstrel , is "the praise of ladies". Incidentally, Machaut was one of the last lyric poets to set many of his poems to music.
He is also of interest as the author of what is probably the first autobiographical love novel in French literature, Le Livre du voir dit (= the book of true poetry), a love story written in 1362 about the young Péronne d'Armentières and the already elderly poet, whereby this at the same time thematizes the genesis of his work.
Machaut's verse Le Jugement du Roi de Navarre (= the judgment of the King of Navarre) should be mentioned as a document of widespread medieval anti-Judaism . Here the great plague of 1349/1350 is portrayed as a result of well poisoning by Jews and the pogroms are seen as a just punishment.
Machaut was regarded by his contemporaries as a master above all of lyrical art, with a great influence on later poets such as Jean Froissart , Eustache Deschamps and Christine de Pizan .
His existence as an artist in the service of courts and princely patrons was to become typical for his successors in the late Middle Ages.
The composer
Machaut is considered to be the most important Ars nova composer . Because of the complicated harmony , isoperiodic and isorhythmy , as well as the detachment from the cantus firmus in the tenor and the upgrading of the cantilena in his work, he is regarded as an “ avant-garde ” of the 14th century . His Mass de Nostre Dame (around 1360/65) is considered to be the first complete four-part setting of the ordinarium parts as a cycle. Until then, it was customary to sing the individual ordinarium parts with one voice (sometimes alternating between choir and solo). The novelty of the polyphonic composition technique - not only with Machaut - was a thorn in the side of the church. In a bull of 1325, Pope John XXII criticized the new style and demanded, under threats of church punishment, the restoration of unanimous chant, which is probably based on the tone mysticism of the time, in which unanimity symbolized the unity and simultaneous multiplicity of God. According to the Pope, only the octave (symbol for the perfection and bliss of all saints in God), fourth (complaint about earthly imperfection, the unfinished) and the fifth should be used as the purest interval as intervals in music .
The main work of Guillaume de Machaut, however, consists of secular compositions: Virelais (from Machaut, in contrast to his new structure of the ballad, also called chanson balladé), rondeaus and ballads . What is new about the structure of the song is the task of the cantus firmus , which means that the tenor, as the deepest voice, was the carrier of the melody until it began to work. Machaut now assigns the melody to the cantilena , the upper part, while the tenor (middle part) and contratenor have an accompanying function. In contrast to the cantus firmus, the cantilena is a fictitious one. For the first time this means the freedom of all voices in a contrapuntal movement, whereby, as we are used to today, the upper part has the most important function, the melody. The freedom to find melodies also enabled Machaut to optimally design his love poetry in music . The music gives the text an extraordinary individuality, it supports the statements and its structure is closely tied to the verses of the text. He achieves this through the isoperiodic, which divides the individual voices into uniform periods, as well as through the isorhythmic, which also brings the voices into rhythmic harmony. With the use of isoperiodic and isorhythmic, Guillaume de Machaut ties in with the Notre Dame school under Léonin and Pérotin .
Machaut's work - poetry as well as compositions - must be viewed in the context of the society of the time. The recipients of his work were the royal courts. Therefore, the delectare is clearly in the foreground in his work , which he also remarks in retrospect between 1360 and 1370 in his work Prologue . In this “foreword” to the manuscripts with his works, which he had written and which represent a unique source of a medieval composer, his self-image as an artist becomes evident. He tells of the fact that he accepted the commission of the personified Nature to present “ le bien honneurs qui sont en amours ” more than was previously the case. From the Nature it made as a condition and means of designing three basic forms to: scens, Retorique and Musique . This shows Machaut's great self-image. With his courtly musica reservata , which includes his poetry through music, Machaut tried to tie in with the troubadours and trouvères .
Works
- poetry
- music
- Messe de Nostre Dame with the parts Kyrie , Gloria , Credo , Sanctus , Agnus Dei , Ite, missa est (4 voices)
- 23 motets
- Hoquetus David (3 voices)
- Songs in Kantilenensatz : there are known
- 42 ballads
- 21 rondeaus
- 34 Virelais
- Other song forms
- 33 Lais
literature
- Wulf Arlt : Machaut, Guillaume de. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 11 (Lesage - Menuhin). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1121-7 , Sp. 719–749 ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
- Agnès Baril: Guillaume de Machaut, le livre du voir dit. Commentaire grammatical et philologique des lignes 1 à 4153 ( CAPES Agrégation lettres ). Ellipses, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-7298-0770-5 , pp. 41-366.
- Jacqueline Cerquiglini: Guillaume de Machaut et l'écriture au XIVe siècle. “Un engin si soutil” (= Bibliothèque du XVe siècle. 47). Champion, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-7453-0584-0 .
- Lawrence Earp: Guillaume de Machaut. A guide to research (= Garland reference library of the humanities. 996). Garland, New York NY et al. a. 1995, ISBN 0-8240-2323-4 .
- Daniel Poirion: Le poète et le prince. L'évolution du lyrisme courtois de Guillaume de Machaut à Charles d'Orléans (= Université de Grenoble. Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines 35, ZDB -ID 1475932-9 ). Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1965.
Web links
- Works by and about Guillaume de Machaut in the catalog of the German National Library
- Sheet music and audio files by Guillaume de Machaut in the International Music Score Library Project
- Article in name, title and dates of the French Literature (source for "life and literary work")
- Short biography (French)
- Lyric texts (French)
- Poetry and sound samples (French)
- Short biography (French)
- Texts, biography, discography (English)
- Handwriting of his works in the Burgerbibliothek Bern on e-codices
- Description of the manuscript (Cod. 218) in the catalog of the Burgerbibliothek Bern
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Guillaume de Machaut |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Guillaume de Machault; Machaut, Guillaume de |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French composer, chronicler and poet of the Middle Ages |
| DATE OF BIRTH | between 1300 and 1305 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | unsure: Machault |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 13, 1377 |
| Place of death | Reims |