requires an attention to formal balance and development
unprecedented in medieval music.
The composition of polyphonic songs based on the
formes fi xes of ballade, rondeau, and virelai, began prob-
ably in the 1340s. Several experimental early works give
the impression that Machaut was decisive in the develop-
ment of this new musical style. The mature works, with
a highly melismatic text carrying voice accompanied
by textless tenor and contratenor, remained standard
through most of the 15th century. A small core of works,
mostly ballades, circulated widely, reaching Languedoc,
Italy, and the empire, especially the popular De petit po,
De Fortune me day plaindre, and De toutes fl eurs. The
learned enumeration of mythological characters in the
Voir dit double ballade Quant Theseus/Ne quier veoir
and the clear musical setting-off of the refrain are char-
acteristics imitated in later 14th-century ballades.
Machaut’s Mass, formerly thought to have been com-
posed for the coronation of Charles V at Reims on May
19, 1364, is now considered to have been composed for
a foundation made by Guillaume and his brother Jean
for services to commemorate their deaths. The Mass ap-
pears to have been performed regularly at these services
at the cathedral of Reims until after 1411.
Machaut stands at the culmination of a movement in
French literature marked by a growing interest in the
manuscript presentation of an author’s works. Several
manuscripts, prepared at various stages of Machaut’s
career, collect his complete works, carefully organized
into sections by genre, most usually retaining the same
order from manuscript to manuscript, with new works
added at the end of each series. In general, it appears
that each genre is arranged in chronological order. Such
complete-works manuscripts had an infl uence on later
poets, such as Froissart and Christine de Pizan; the
transmission of musical works after Machaut, however,
was confi ned largely to mixed anthologies.
The Machaut manuscripts are often elaborately illu-
minated, and the series of illustrations for a given nar-
rative poem was in many cases doubtless determined by
the author. The several artists who illustrated Machaut’s
manuscripts include fi gures known for their work on
manuscripts of kings John II and Charles V. Unfortu-
nately, the original owners of these volumes, except for
a posthumous collection belonging to the duke of Berry,
have not been conclusively identifi ed.
See also Charles II the Bad; Charles V the Wise;
Christine de Pizan
Further Reading
Machaut, Guillaume de. Œuvres de Guillaume de Machaut, ed.
Ernest Hoepffner. 3 vols. Paris: Didot, 1908–21.
——. Guillaume de Machaut: poésies lyriques, ed. Vladimir
Chichmaref. 2 vols. Paris: Champion, 1909.
——. Guillaume de Machaut: Musikalische Werke, ed.
Friedrich Ludwig. 4 vols. Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel,
1926–54.
——. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, ed. Leo
Schrade. Monaco: L’Oiseau-Lyre, 1956, Vols. 2–3: The Works
of Guillaume de Machaut.
——. Guillaume de Machaut: Le jugement du roy de Behaigne
and Remede de Fortune, ed. and trans. James I. Wimsatt, Wil-
liam W. Kibler, and Rebecca A. Baltzer. Athens: University
of Georgia Press, 1988.
——. The Judgment of the King of Navarre, ed. and trans. R.
Barton Palmer. New York: Garland, 1988.
——. Le confort d’ami, ed. and trans. R. Barton Palmer. New
York: Garland, 1992.
Avril, François. Manuscript Painting at the Court of France: The
Fourteenth Century. New York: Braziller, 1978.
Brownlee, Kevin. Poetic Identity in Guillaume de Machaut.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.
Calin, William. A Poet at the Fountain: Essays on the Narrative
Verse of Guillaume de Machaut. Lexington: University of
Kentucky Press, 1974.
Cerquiglini, Jacqueline. “Un engin si soutil”: Guillaume de Mach-
aut et I’écriture au XIVe siècle. Paris: Champion, 1985.
Earp, Lawrence. Guillaume de Machaut: A Guide to Research.
Forthcoming.
Guillaume de Machaut: poète et compositeur. Paris: Klincksieck,
1982.
Huot, Silvia. From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old
French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1987.
Imbs, Paul. Le Voir-dit de Guillaume de Machaut: étude littéraire.
Paris: Klincksieck, 1991.
Leech-Wilkinson, Daniel. Machaut’s Mass: An Introduction.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.
Machabey, Armand. Guillaume de Machaut: La vie et l’œuvre
musicale. 2 vols. Paris: Richard-Masse, 1955.
Poirion, Daniel. Le poète et le prince: l’évolution du lyrisme
courtois de Guillaume de Machaut à Charles d’Orléans.
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965.
William W. Kibler/Lawrence EarpMACROBIUS (fl. 400-425)
The identity of Macrobius is disputed. Although not a
Roman by birthplace, he lived in Rome and received a
good education by the standards of his time. His two
major works—written for the education of his son,
Eustathius—were Saturnalia and Commentary on the
Dream of Scipio. These had the greatest infl uence in
the Middle Ages and Renaissance, although one or two
other writings have also been attributed to Macrobius.
Macrobius’s thought is based on Platonic philosophy
and cosmology; he also was recognized as an authority
on the virtues.
The Saturnalia has not survived in its entirety. All
extant manuscripts derive from a single codex of the
late eighth or early ninth century. Today the work is
divided into seven books that constitute a symposium
or banquet; that is, the Saturnalia purports to relate how
a gathering of learned men celebrated in seemly fash-
ion the three-day feast of the Saturnalia by discussingMACROBIUS