M
MACHAUT, GUILLAUME DE
(ca. 1300–1377). The greatest French poet and composer of the 14th century. Machaut’s
narrative dits set a style in poetry that would predominate in France and England through
the 15th century; his lyrics, many set to music, established and popularized the formes
fixes; his Messe de Nostre Dame is the earliest surviving polyphonic setting of all
movements of the Mass Ordinary by one composer; his strong interest in manuscript
production made him a prime force in creating an awareness of the artist as a professional
figure.
Born near Reims, Machaut probably received a university education in Paris. After his
studies, he served from ca. 1323 to the late 1330s as personal secretary and clerk to Jean
l’Aveugle of Luxembourg, king of Bohemia. In 1333, Jean procured a canonry at Reims
for Machaut, whose name appears regularly in the records of Reims after 1340. With
Jean’s death in 1346 at the Battle of Crécy, Machaut did not lack for patrons. He
composed his Remede de Fortune for Jean’s daughter, Bonne of Luxembourg, who was
also the mother of two of his most important patrons, Charles, duke of Normandy (later
Charles V), and John, duke of Berry. Machaut praises Charles in his Voir dit (1363–65)
and probably composed his last major poem, the verse chronicle Prise d’Alexandrie (ca.
1369–71), at his instigation. Machaut dedicated his Fonteinne amoureuse to the duke of
Berry, and one of the most elaborate manuscripts of Machaut’s collected works bears the
duke’s signature. In the early 1350s, Machaut established an important association with
Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, whose family had hereditary connections with
Champagne and who had married a daughter of Bonne and King John II. Although he
apparently continued to cultivate royal patrons, no major works by Machaut are known
after the Prise, and public records do not speak of him again until his death in April 1377.
Most of Machaut’s poetic and musical production can be dated to the period after he
settled at Reims in the late 1330s until ca. 1370. He composed some 420 lyric poems,
most in the formes fixes of chant royal (eight extant), ballade (239), rondeau (seventy-
seven), virelai (forty), and lai (twenty-three). He also wrote twenty-three motets, nine
complaintes, eight long and four shorter dits amoureux, a poem of comfort and counsel
(Confort d’ami), the Prise d’Alexandrie, as well as a Prologue that introduced his late
complete-works manuscripts. In total, Machaut produced some 60,000 lines of verse. He
set about 140 of his lyrics to music, providing polyphonic settings of forty ballades,
twenty-one rondeaux, four lais, one virelai, and twenty-three motets and monophonic
settings for one ballade, sixteen lais, thirty virelais, one complainte, one chant royal, and
The Encyclopedia 1083