Machaut

Featuring

Chanticleer
Guillaume de Machaut

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Composer Biography

Guillaume de Machaut, born in obscurity around 1300, became a famous poet and composer by his death in 1377, moving in the highest circles of French nobility.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Machaut believed that one must always create from a place of joy, even when writing about sad matters, stating that 'when the heart is full of joy, it delights and rejoices in composing song and text in Sweet Pleasure.'

Composition History

Machaut's career was aided by the cathedral school, which offered advancement to musically talented boys outside the noble classes, and patronage from the French royal family.

Compositional Technique

Machaut used cutting-edge technologies of his day, including the single-author multimedia codex and the innovative musical notation of the Ars nova, which allowed for precise recording of musical events.

Compositional Technique

Machaut's polyphonic Messe de Nostre Dame is unique for the 14th century as a multi-voice mass setting composed to be performed as a unified multipart composition.

Compositional Technique

Machaut's rondeaux often feature 'equivocal rhyme,' a type of pun where end rhymes sound the same but have different meanings, such as 'visa bel'/'vis a bel'/'vis Abel'.

Performer Biography

Chanticleer, the GRAMMY® Award-winning vocal ensemble, was founded in San Francisco in 1978 by singer and musicologist Louis Botto and is known as an 'orchestra of voices'.