Guillaume de Machaut (redirected from Guillaume Machaut)

Guillaume de Machaut: see Machaut, Guillaume de.

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Guillaume de Machaut 

(also known by the Latin name Guillelmus de Mascandio). Born circa 1300 in Machaut, Ardennes; died 1377. French poet and composer.

Guillaume de Machaut founded a school of rhetoric and canonized poetic forms for 14th-century French poetry. His poetic works are linked to the growth of urban culture and Scholasticism. His best work is A Book About Something That Really Happened (1365), a novel in verse with inserted prose letters about the love of an elderly poet for a young girl. His other works include the narrative poem The Court of the King of Navarre (1349), the rhymed chronicle The Seizure of Alexandria (c. 1370), and the narrative poem Pastoral Times, which contains a description of 14th-century musical instruments. Guillaume de Machaut was a representative of Ars nova (new art), a progressive trend in early Renaissance music. He composed church music (motets, the first mass in the history of music) and created numerous songs (virelays, ballades, rondos) with instrumental accompaniments that combined the musical poetic tradition of the trouvères with the new polyphonic art.

WORKS

Oeuvres, vols. 1-3. Paris, 1908-21.
Poésies lyriques, vols. 1-2. Published by V. Chichmarev. Paris [1909].

REFERENCES

Shishmarev, V. F. Lirika i liriki pozdnego srednevekov’ia. Paris, 1911.
Istoriia frantsuzskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1946. Pages 170, 172-76, 179.
Prioult, A. “Un Poète voyageur Guillaume de Machaut et la ‘Reise’ de Jean l’Aveugle roi de Bohême, en 1328-29.” Les Lettres romanes, 1950, vol. 4. Pages 3-39.
Machabey, A. Guillaume de Machaut, vols. 1-2. Paris, 1955.

I. A. LILEEVA