And not only the form but the sense as well, which it symbolizes on an allegorical plane transcending
the “materialistic” onomatopoeia of the Ivrea chaces. Machaut’s Lay of the Fountain is a meditation, by a
lover whose lady has rejected him and who seeks solace in divine love, on the mysteries of the Virgin
birth and the consubstiantiality of the Holy Trinity—three Persons in one Godhead. The image of the
fountain appears in the fourth pair of verses, the second to be set as a chace. It is a trinitarian metaphor:
“Imagine a fountain, a stream, and a canal; they are three, but the three make one; a single water through
all three must run.” Just so, the chace serves as the metaphor’s metaphor: a single melody running through
all three voices in a musical representation of trinus in unitate (“three in one”), the verbal emblem of the
Trinity (Ex. 9-20).
The manuscript source contains only the single melody, with signs near the beginning to indicate the
second and third entrances, and another set of signs near the end to indicate the finishing notes for the
second and third voices. Possibly another level of trinitarian symbolism, but certainly a source of aural
delight, is the elegant use of hockets. A single line, of course, can no more sing hockets than a single hand
can clap. The line is full of strategically placed rests, however; when it is sung by itself it seems full of
holes that are plugged by the other voices when the hocket texture is complete. Thus, the single line attains
fullness only when complemented by its two canonic counterparts, as the full concept of Godhead
subsumes the three persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The theological message is entrancingly—yes,
sensuously—delivered by the delicately wrought contrapuntal texture, the three statements of the tune
fitting together like pieces in an aural jigsaw puzzle. That is harmony in the most literal, etymological
sense. Like the Trinity itself, a well-wrought chace can be far more than the sum of its parts; and this
particular chace is possibly Machaut’s greatest feat of subtilitas.
EX. 9-20 Guillaume de Machaut, Chace 4 from Lai de la fonteinne