Messe de Notre Dame - Guillaume de Machaut
Have you ever heard the 'Messe de Notre Dame', by Guillaume de Machaut? It's an amazing artifact of 14th-century polyphony. It is a Ladymass, with shorter-texted movements built upon the chant which would have been performed for that liturgy. The chant is in the tenor line, which is organized in rhythmic groups called taleae. The other sections decorate around the long-note chant,
and their rhythmic patterns repeat cyclically as well.
I'm not sure why we didn't include a movement of Machaut's Mass in our 'Music of the Spheres' program in 2013 (except that the music is basically written for solo voices, or at most a few per part). This piece should be the theme song for the Flammarion engraving. Those gears and wheels seem to actually BE the music the guy is looking at in wonder!
Take it for a spin. I'm providing an edited recording of the Kyrie, having removed repeats of each thrice-sung section. (It is sometimes also done with the chant, called 'Kyrie Cunctipotens genitor', sung without the polyphony in alternate verses.)
I'm also attaching the old Leo Schrade edition of the entire mass, in case you're moved now or in the future to listen to the entire piece. And as an extra bonus, I'm attaching the first page of one of the surviving manuscripts of the piece.
Now get a cup of tea or cocoa and spend a little time in a strange, ancient world!
Have you ever heard the 'Messe de Notre Dame', by Guillaume de Machaut? It's an amazing artifact of 14th-century polyphony. It is a Ladymass, with shorter-texted movements built upon the chant which would have been performed for that liturgy. The chant is in the tenor line, which is organized in rhythmic groups called taleae. The other sections decorate around the long-note chant,
and their rhythmic patterns repeat cyclically as well.
I'm not sure why we didn't include a movement of Machaut's Mass in our 'Music of the Spheres' program in 2013 (except that the music is basically written for solo voices, or at most a few per part). This piece should be the theme song for the Flammarion engraving. Those gears and wheels seem to actually BE the music the guy is looking at in wonder!
Take it for a spin. I'm providing an edited recording of the Kyrie, having removed repeats of each thrice-sung section. (It is sometimes also done with the chant, called 'Kyrie Cunctipotens genitor', sung without the polyphony in alternate verses.)
I'm also attaching the old Leo Schrade edition of the entire mass, in case you're moved now or in the future to listen to the entire piece. And as an extra bonus, I'm attaching the first page of one of the surviving manuscripts of the piece.
Now get a cup of tea or cocoa and spend a little time in a strange, ancient world!