medieval.org
Arsonor 002-2
Church of Vieusart, Brabant, Wallonia
febrero de 1999
Guillaume de MACHAUT
Messe Nostre-Dame a 4
01 - Kyrie [5:37]
02 - Gloria [5:32]
03 - Credo [7:46]
04 - Sanctus [4:55]
05 - Agnus Dei [4:10]
John DUNSTABLE
06 - Magnificat a 4 [10:02]
Guillaume DuFAY
Missa Se la face ay pale a 5
07 - Kyrie [4:42]
08 - Gloria [10:23]
09 - Credo [9:59]
10 - Sanctus [7:27]
11 - Agnus Dei [5:54]
Laudantes Consort
Guy Janssens
Liz Coleman, Véronique De Herde, Catherine Janssens, Charlotte
Ripperger, Hans van den Broeck, Clotilde Van Dieren · altus
Jacques Antoine, Laurent Jäger · tenor
Mike Hill, Charles King · bassus
The origins and
development of early polyphony
Guillaume de Machaut
(ca 1300-1377)
John Dunstable
(ca 1390-1453)
Guillaume Dufay
(ca 1400-1474)
To measure music
Despite the obvious genius of Perotinus, the real musical revolution
was still to come, that which was to measure music, that is to say, to
attribute to each note a length in time in simple proportion to all the
other notes of the same piece. This technique of proportional writing
was basic to Ars Nova which was to illuminate the works of the
14th century.
To measure music... Was it a coincidence if this new step in musical
notation came about at a moment when, for the first time in history,
the precise mensuration of time had become a social priority? Up to
then, sundials, sandglasses and clepsyders had done the job. Indeed, a
society based on slavery where work is free or on a feudal economy
where work is measured by the accomplishment of specific chores or
payments in kind, had no need whatever for clocks or watches.
On the other hand, the precise measurement of time is indigenous to a
merchant society where individuals are free to dispose of their
talents, work and know-how within precise limits, defined contractually
and in return for adequate compensations. The public disposal of the
precise measurement of time rapidly became an indispensable public
service: the first public clock was installed in France, at Caen, in
1314: Machaut was some 14 years old.
His life span was to coincide with the exile of the popes in Avignon
(1309-1377), which explains his relative freedom in relation to the
Roman tradition. All the more so, after the road to innovation had been
paved by the great musical theorist, Philippe de Vitry (1291-1361) who,
in his Ars Nova Musicae, introduced the proportional
subdivision of notes. The extraordinary melodic and rhythmic liberation
which this new technique permitted was largely responsible for the
rapid growth of the potentialities of musical composition, more
particularly by the development of counterpoint.
Machaut, heir of
the past and announcer of the future
Although Machaut did not invent this new technique, he made such
original use of it that he is a key figure in the history of music, all
at once heir of the past and precursor of things to come.
Born in or around Rheims in north-eastern France, at the turn of the
century (± 1300), his education was so brilliant that, at the
age of 25, he had already become secretary to the powerful John of
Luxemburg, King of Bohemia, son of the Germanic Emperor Henry VII. He
led a fastuous and adventurous life in the service of this great Prince
and several of his successors. As he was also a great poet, he
described in his famous Dits, a sort of narrative text, the great
exploits of the princes whom he served.
He finally retired in 1357 in his home town of Reims, having received a
well paid canonry as a reward for his many public services. Henceforth,
he concentrated essentially on his musical and poetic production.
Although popular songs obviously had his preference - he wrote hundreds
of them - his masterpiece is undoubtedly the Notre-Dame Mass,
first polyphonic mass conceived as an homogeneous whole. Thus Machaut
created a new genre which was to know a considerable development in the
centuries to come. Thanks to the new technique of proportional writing,
he succeeded in attributing a greater autonomy to each of the four
voices used while increasing at the same time the rhythmic variety of
the different sections of the work. Here was at last the musical
masterpiece on the sound basis of which the future of polyphonic
writing could now be developed to reach its climax in 16th century
Renaissance.
John Dunstable,
promotor of the english style on the continent
The English composer, John Dunstable (± 1390-1453) came to the
Continent in the suite of the Duke of Bedford, brother of the
illustrious King Henry V of England who, after defeating the French at
Agincourt, promptly claimed the heritage of William of Normandy (the
Conqueror) and the Aquitaine of the Plantagenets.
One can surmise that Dunstable stayed on in the territories occupied by
the English during the twelve year period of Bedford’s regency
(1422 to 1435). Nevertheless, he wielded a major musical influence in
fostering “le goût anglais” - the English style -
which, by systematically introducing the interval of the third
into the fifth used almost exclusively on the Continent,
confered to music a much greater harmonic plenitude, a sonority much
more familiar to our modern ear.
Furthermore, this innovation which formed the triad (C-E-G) was
to progressively increase musicians’ awareness of the importance
of harmony, i.e. vertical writing, in contrast with the horizontal
structure of polyphony. This proved an essential element to the future
of musical development.
Guillaume Dufay,
first modern composer
Dunstable had many followers. The greatest among them was undoubtedly
Guillaume Dufay (pronounced Du-fa-ee), (± 1400-1474), born
exactly one century after Machaut, in what is today the Belgian
province of Hainaut.
At that time, however, this region was part of the Dukedom of Burgundy
which covered vast territories extending from Friseland in the north of
Holland, through most of modern day Belgium, Alsace, Lorraine, Picardy,
Cambrésis, Franche-Comté and Burgundy itself. Its capital
was Dijon where a fastuous and brilliant court attracted the finest
artists of the times.
By its geographical situation, the Dukedom of Philippe the Good
(1396-1467) was a true microcosm of Europe, open to all influences:
from Flanders to the north, Italy to the south, the German states of
the Saint Empire to the east and France and England to the west.
If Dufay was indebted to Dunstable for his legacy of the English
third, he did not hesitate to go much further: he completed the
Englishman’s harmony, most of whose works are written for 3
voices, by the systematic use of a fourth voice and sometimes even a
fifth. The sonority thus created is literally unheard of. This is the
case of one of the four late masses composed by Dufay which we have
recorded here Se la face ay pale. Written on the theme of a
popular song, it belongs to the period during which, after having
extensively travelled through Europe, including a long stay at the
Pontifical Chapel (1428-1433), Dufay retired definitively in Cambrai in
1445 to concentrate on his musical production.
Thus Dufay is the first composer in history whose music sounds
“modern” to our ears; that is to say, music on much the
same harmonic principles that were to be used later by the great
classical composers such as Bach, Haydn and Mozart: the archaisms of
Middle Age music are totally abandoned and the technique used is far
more supple, fluid and free. Compared to a certain harshness in
Machaut, a new mellowness pervades this music without in any way
hampering its expressive force. After the great collective tragedies
experienced during the 14th century - wars, plagues and famines - the
15th century brought the blossoming of a renaissance based on a new
sense of values, more personal and certainly more adapted to the
evolution of the times. Much like in ancient Greece, man was once more
becoming the measure of all things.
Musically, the works of Dufay were part of this cultural heritage. They
constituted the harmonic ground on which the following generation of
composers were to build their own sonorous cathedrals.
Last but not least, there is yet another characteristic of
Dufay’s works which must be underlined. He is probably the first
composer - or at least the greatest - who was genuinely preoccupied by
a fundamental formal principle essential to all true artistic
endeavors: the problem of the global unity of a work of art and, more
specially, of works as vast as the holy mass and, additionally, made up
of several different pieces.
Up to that time, most compositions were of small dimensions in which
any unifying element - such as a Gregorian theme or a
rhythmical contour - did not have the scope to engender monotony. Even
in the case of the Machaut mass, we have 5 distinct parts
(Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) which are assembled
according to the logic of the text of the ordinary and not in
purely musical terms.
This is where Dufay innovates: in his mature masses and more
particularly in the work recorded here, he attempts to devise a
strictly musical unity between the different sections. This is why he
is considered as the creator of the “cyclical mass”,
a work whose different parts are unified by the use of a recurring
musical theme which can be a sequence of Gregorian chant or even an
element foreign to the traditional liturgy such as, for example, a
popular song.
Here the real sacrilege is less the incorporation of popular music into
liturgic works - although not uncommon at the time - than the
unbelievable presumption, in the case of a true Christian, to impose
his personal conception of a formal unity to works whose coherence had,
up to then, depended on spiritual values.
To this extent, one can conclude that the composer’s quest for
formal unity was a tangible manifestation of the growing autonomy of
the individual creator with respect to the divine Creator. Henceforth
and to this day, the principle of formal unity was to be paramount to
all works of art, whether they be plastic, literary or musical.
The works recorded
The Notre-Dame Mass is a major work in the history of
music: not only because it is innovative, but at the same time because
it is a true masterpiece.
Innovative because for the first time it assembled in a coherent whole
the five parts of the ordinary mass (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus,
Agnus Dei), sections which up to then had been used separately
according to the logical unfolding of the sacred ceremonials. In
uniting the different parts, Machaut wrested these pieces from their
purely functional role to create an authentic work of art which, by its
very length, transcended the immediate needs of the religious services.
Thus the notion of art for art’s sake was beginning to take root,
a distinctive characteristic of the development of Western culture.
If the Gloria and Credo remain essentially homophonic
– all four voices singing simultaneously the same syllables of
the same text – with the exception of the two remarkable closing
Amens which are treated in a lavish polyphonic style with an astounding
rhythmic diversity – the other parts – and more specially
the magnificent opening Kyrie – are more in the spirit of
what we have come to consider as the traditional polyphonic style
– without forgetting the essential fact that, here, it is Machaut
who is forging single-handed the tradition that will blossom in the
following centuries.
One last remark: besides the assembling of the five parts of the mass,
Machaut did not endeavour to go further in the process of unification,
be it understood that his very personal and recognisable style could
not but serve this purpose as well.
Dunstable’s Magnificat is written for three voices like
most of his other works. If the music produced seems somewhat more
sonorous, it is simply due to the systematic use of the English
thirds and sixths which, in France at that time, were
considered as dissonances (or imperfect consonances).
From a musical point of view, this work constitutes a welcome
transition to the Mass for four voices by Guillaume
Dufay.
This work can be considered as the second great masterpiece of the
Western polyphonic era. Having greatly benefited from
Dunstable’s innovations, Dufay set about integrating the harmonic
audacities of the English style in his later masses and, more
particularly in his Se la face ay pale, by the introduction of
the new chords and the general use of four voices.
Se la face ay pale was composed on a homonymous profane song by
Dufay himself which he uses throughout the different parts as a
unifying theme.
This example of one of the first “cyclical” masses of
western music constitutes a work of an unprecedented sonorous
splendour. The obvious risk of monotony through the use of the same
theme is artfully avoided by subtle variations and transformations of
this theme, of its rhythmic configuration, of its harmonic texture and
of its vocal presentation. This is music of the highest quality of
inspiration.
Thus it is no surprise that Dufay’s works were to constitute the
firm harmonic foundation on which all the following composers were to
find their own musical inspiration.