parts were conjointly laid out like a foundation to govern the proportions of the whole. In extremely
formalized motets like this one, architectural analogies are virtually inescapable and in all likelihood
envisaged aforethought.
Although the diminution of note values in the talea is quite salient to the ear (the more so because the
texted parts choose that moment to break into hockets), the “polymetrical” superimposition and exchange
of perfect and imperfect mensurations in the slow-moving lower parts is not. In this it resembles the
harmonious orbits of heavenly bodies, which fit together according to the divinely ordained musica
mundana, and which according to ancient tradition emit tones that the mind can infer, but that the senses
cannot experience. Like the architectural analogy, this analogy too was surely present to the composer’s
imagination as he planned the trajectories of his supporting voices. It reflected the neo-Platonic
worldview of every master of science or magus (the word, not coincidentally, from which “magician” is
derived.) As a magus, Machaut believed that
the world was hierarchically ordered, with intellectual elements occupying the highest realm; that superior elements in the
hierarchy influenced inferior ones; and that the wise man might ascend through the levels of the world structure (or at
least interact from below with higher levels) to gain special benefit from these influences.^8So writes Gary Tomlinson, a scholar who by means of musical parallels has sought to penetrate the
arcane world of premodern occult philosophy. The fourteenth-century isorhythmic motet, possibly the
most hierarchically conceived and rigorously ordered genre in the history of European music, was more
concerned than any other to incorporate a representation of the higher “intellectual” elements and their
controlling influence, which, being hidden from the senses, were in the most literal and etymological way
occult. That is another way of interpreting the enormous value and emphasis that was placed on the
“architecture” of the motet.
And yet the other special attribute of the motet was its heterogeneity, its power of harmonizing
contradictions. So none of what has been said about its occultism should imply neglect of the sensuous
surface, which in Machaut’s hands was particularly and famously seductive, especially in the introitus,
shown in Ex. 8-6. What made it so was an extraordinary harmonic idiom that, while emulated somewhat
by the next generation or two of French composers, nevertheless remained Machaut’s unique and
inimitable signature. It stemmed from the use of what we would call chromaticism, known in Machaut’s
day as musica ficta (“imaginary music”) or musica falsa (“false music”).
EX. 8-6 Guillaume de Machaut, Felix virgo/Inviolata/AD TE SUSPIRAMUS, mm. 1–40