Born: Rheims (?) c. 1300. Education: May have been educated at Rheims, where he spent much of his later life. Career: Entered the service of John of Luxemburg, King of Bohemia around 1323, and remained his secretary until the king’s death in 1346, subsequently attached to the houses of Charles, King of Navarre, John, Duke of Berry, and the princes of France; held chaplaincy at Verdun, 1330, Arras, 1332, and Rheims, 1333. Prolific composer: the most important figure of the French Ars Nova. Spent much of his later years producing works in manuscript for his royal patrons. Died: 13 April 1377.
Publications
Collections
Les Oeuvres, edited by Prosper Tarbe. 1849.
Oeuvres, edited by Ernest Hoepffner. 3 vols., 1908-21.
Poesies lyriques, edited by Vladimir Chichmaref. 2 vols., 1909; 1 vol., 1973.
Verse
Le Confort d’ami, edited and translated by R. Barton Palmer. 1992.
Le Dit de la harpe, edited by K. Young. 1943.
15 poesies inedites, edited by Bernard Monod. 1903.
The Fountain of Love and Two Other Love Vision Poems, edited and translated by R. Burton Palmer. 1993.
Le Jugement du roy de Behaigne; and Remede de fortune, edited by James L. Wimsatt and William W. Kibler. 1988.
The Judgement of the King of Bavaria, edited and translated by R. Barton Palmer, 1984.
Le Jugement du roy de Navarre, as The Judgement of the King of Navarre, edited and translated by R. Barton Palmer. 1988.
Le Livre du Voir dit, edited by P. Paris. 1875, reprinted 1969, and by P. Imbs, 1988.
La Louange des dames, edited by Nigel Wilkins. 1972.
Prise d’Alexandrie, edited by L. de Mas Latrie. 1877; as Guillaume de Machaut: The Capture of Alexandria, translated by Janet Shirley, 2001.
Quelques poemes de Guillaume de Machaut. In ”Dits” et ”debats” by Jean Froissart, edited by Anthime Fourrier, 1979.
Recueil de Galantries, edited by A. Vitale Brovarone. 1980.
The Tale of the Alerion, edited and translated by Minnette Gaudet and Constance B. Hieatt. 1994.
Other
Guillaume de Machaut: Musikalische Werke, edited by Friedrich Ludwig. 4 vols., 1926-54.
Critical Studies:
Guillaume de Machaut: Musicien et poete remois by Andre Douce, 1948; Guillaume de Machaut by Siegmund Levarie,1954; Guillaume de Machaut, 1300-1377: La Vie et l’oeuvre musi-cale by Armand Machabey, 2 vols., 1955; Le Poete et le Prince: L’Evolution du lyrisme courtois de Guillaume de Machaut a Charles d’Orleans by Daniel Poiron, 1965; The Marguerite Poetry of Guil-laume de Machaut edited by James Wimsatt, 1970; Guillaume de Machaut by Gilbert Reaney, 1971; A Poet at the Fountain: Essays on the Narrative Verse of Guillaume de Machaut by William Calin, 1974; Poetic Identity in Guillaume de Machaut by Kevin Brownlee, 1984; Guillaume de Machaut et l’ecriture au XVe siecle: ”Un engin si soutil” by Jacqueline Cerquiglini, 1985; Machaut’s Mass: An Introduction by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, 1990; Le Voir-dit de Guillaume de Machaut, etude litteraire by Paul Imbs, 1991; The Grammar of 14th Century Melody: Tonal Organization and Compositional Process in the Chansons of Guillaume de Machaut and the ars subtilior by Yolanda Plumley, 1996; Pseudo-autobiography in the Fourteenth Century: Juan Ruiz, Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, and Geoffrey Chaucer by Laurence de Looze, 1997; Logos as Number and Proportion in Amiens Cathedral and in the Kyrie of the Messe de Nostre Dame by Guillaume de Machaut by Dominique Pascale Bardet, 1999.
After the death of Guillaume de Machaut in 1377, the poet Eustache Deschamps wrote a moving deploration (put to music by Andrieu) in which he lamented the death of the man who was universally considered to be the greatest poet and musician of his age. All those who care about music and poetry are invited to mourn the passing of a figure who, in the words of William Calin, ”as a musician and as a poet, is one of the great international masters of the 14th century.” And yet, after his death, Guillaume de Machaut’s reputation went into something of a decline, and it is only in the last 30 years or so that he has come to be recognized as an outstanding author. For the genres that he perfected—and to a certain degree invented—such as the dit, the motet, the virelai, and the polyphonic ballade and rondeau, were soon to go out of fashion, to be replaced by genres borrowed from classical antiquity. Born in 1300, he was the dominant figure both in lyric poetry and in music in 14th-century France. His output was enormous and wide-ranging. Although a canon of the church (he spent his later years in Rheims, in his native Champagne), he wrote much verse that was profane and gently erotic in tone, as well as sacred music. He was also very much a court poet, depending on wealthy patrons for his livelihood and forced to write works to their taste as much as to his own. Nonetheless, a distinctive authorial voice comes through in his work, especially in his dits, a genre which he effectively made his own.
Guillaume de Machaut wrote ten long dits and four shorter ones. Among the long ones, the most famous are perhaps the Le Livre du Voir dit, the Remede de fortune, Le Jugement du roy de Behaigne [The Judgement of the King of Behaigne], and Le Jugement du roy de Navarre (The Judgement of the King of Navarre). Despite their apparent diversity, these narrative dits share a common pattern. The narrator, usually preoccupied with love, embarks on a quest that will be both a physical journey and an imaginative adventure of experience and learning. He will return a happier and wiser man. The trappings of the quest are recognizably courtly, with gardens of love, fine castles, and of course beautiful women. But these works are much more complex than this structure and subject-matter would appear to allow. As Calin has pointed out, all the dits (a very flexible genre) are ”poems of consolation.” Guillaume de Machaut uses these long narrative poems to provide the reader with a very clear idea of his world-view. The progression of the protagonist from being an inexperienced outsider to being welcomed in his maturity to the civilized play world of courtly society is typical. On the way, however, the author gives his views of a series of topics that range from etiquette to morality and even flights of philosophical fancy. The (inevitable) unwillingness of the courtly ladies in these poems to appear anything other than unattainable also allows the author to indulge in pseudoautobiographical musings on the vagaries of love. He invests these poetic fictions with a realistic veneer that lends them an air of authenticity, so much so that critics have sometimes seen his Le Livre du Voir dit as the real-life confessions of an old poet infatuated with a young woman. Whether or not Peronne did exist in the way she is described in Guillaume de Machaut’s poem is perhaps immaterial; what matters more is the realistic depiction of the pangs of love.
Guillaume de Machaut is best known today for his music. Although he is associated in most people’s minds with the Ars nova, he was not in fact especially radical in his musical and poetical tastes and ambitions. In a career lasting 40 years he naturally tried his hand at different styles and forms, and there is an impressive variety of theme, message, and tone in his work. He is remembered as the composer of the first complete polyphonic setting of the ”Ordinary of the Mass.” His output of sacred music is huge, but he is most accessible today as the composer of poems of profane love. The ballade (both mono-phonic and polyphonic) was his favourite form, but he also wrote memorable virelais such as the haunting ”Quant je suis mis au retour” [''When I return''] and works of outstanding complexity. As David Munrow remarked, Guillaume de Machaut’s genius ”lies in the way he combined a mastery of all the musical techniques of his age with a gift of melody and expressiveness. He was as good at writing a simple tune as he was at writing an elaborate isorhythmic motet and he approached the business of composition with the freedom of genius.” The same critic claimed that Guillaume de Machaut’s motets were ”one of the high points of medieval art.” With such technical expertise, such a range of forms and expressions, it is little wonder that Guillaume de Machaut was admired by contemporaries and praised so memorably in words and music by those who survived him.
