ABSTRACT
Guillaume de Machaut's distinctive position in the Middle Ages as both poet and musician has, if anything, been over-stressed. Curiously, however, these two aspects have remained largely separate in modern investigations. Just what is the relationship between text and music in his works and how does he take advantage of his expertise in both fields to produce a union of the two? The present study attempts to provide some insight into the process by presenting a detailed analysis of pieces chosen from the secular refrain forms: the monophonic and polyphonic virelais and polyphonic ballades.
In these works Machaut combined two independently conceived traditions: polyphonic music with its established rhythmic formulae on the one hand, to which text might be added (in the form of motets), and the emerging secular poetic forms on the other, to which music (monophonic) might be added as a means of enhancing their presentation and performance. By viewing poetic line and musical phrase as individual elements, to be combined or separated at the composer's will, Machaut was able to form new structures, possible only through the union of both components yet enhancing each other in the process. Although he is primarily concerned with individual formal characteristics of his poems when setting them to music, the musical fabric does not serve simply to reinforce features of the poetry, but rather sets up a structure of its own to counterbalance that of the text. Thus a particular symmetrical and regular poetic/rhyme scheme may be set against an irregular musical phrase structure and vice versa. Inner rhythms are often brought out in this manner, and even the content of the poem may be given new shades of meaning. These possibilities are presented with the 106poem at its primary level, thus creating an interaction of various levels of meaning. The study explores in considerable detail the techniques by which Machaut achieves this relationship: musical phrasing, alternation of open and closed endings, sudden changes in the speed of declamation, etc.
