Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

MACHAUT MUST GO ON

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ow on to three of the leading names in music after 1300. De Machaut, Dunstable and Dufay. First up is the romantically titled Gaul, poet and composer: Guillaume de Machaut. Again, sorry to digress once more, but what a beautiful name. Just say it to yourself -Guillaume de Machaut. Gorgeous name. De Machaut was born in 1300 and soon realized he had a talent not only for poetry but also for music. By the year 1364, with still a good fourteen years left to live, he would have been forgiven for sitting back, resting on his ars nova, and enjoying himself a little. I mean, to be fair, simply being sixty-four in those days was a bit of an achievement, considering the new black was… well, the Black Death. ('Darling, MWAH, oh you look drop-dead gorgeous… Oh… you've dropped dead.)

De Machaut was one of the last great composers living in the age of the trouveres or troubadours, the particularly French version of what we in England called 'minstrels' or the Germans called ''minnesingers'', literally 'love singers'. A minstrel was effectively a paid, freelance musician, descended from the 'mimes' of ancient Greece and Rome, who were cast out during the barbarian invasions. They were originally actors who took up instruments to pay their way, at a time when this was considered very much a dubious thing to do (no change there, then). If this were the Bible, then the line would probably go something like this:

Mimes begat joculatores; joculatores begat jongleurs: jongleurs begat troubadours: troubadours begat trouveres: trouveres begat menestriers; and menestriers begat minstrels. See?

If, in this world of troubadours, trouveres and menestriers, you are having trouble spotting a minstrel, then here's a useful rule: troubadours sing and rhyme, menestriers play for dances, and minstrels melt in your mouth but not in your hand.

And de Machaut, in the trouveres tradition, was as famous in his lifetime for his words as for his music. A more or less exact contemporary of Boccaccio, the man of the Decameron, he was born in the Ardennes but, having become both learned and a priest - and I'm sure it's possible - he enjoyed lengthy stays in the courts of John of

Luxembourg and the Duchess of Normandy. But it was around the time of Navarre that he put all his efforts into achieving the as yet unachieved, pulling off the as yet unpulled, and doing the as yet… undone. The four-part Mass. No one had, as yet, come up with a Mass that moved according to the 'laws' of harmony, but that sounded… well, good. Rules can be obeyed to the letter, to make a perfectly 'correct' four-part Mass, but as to making it sound great - that was a whole different ballgame.