Editing Guillaume de Machaut (section)

==Music==
{{see also|List of compositions by Guillaume de Machaut}}

Machaut's music comprises a wide variety, from complex masses to short songs, and despite the differences of genre, most still contain "typical Machaut motifs".{{sfn|Reaney|1971|p=18}} He lived after the flowering of both the secular [[troubadour]] and ''[[trouvère]]'' song movements and the ''[[ars antiqua]]'' church style.{{citation needed|date=August 2023}} The musicologist [[Gilbert Reaney]] notes that "before [Machaut], composers either wrote songs or church music. Machaut did both, though it could be said that he neglected the area of liturgical church music."{{sfn|Reaney|1971|p=69}} Besides his mass, Hoquetus ''David'' and a few Latin motets, Machaut's surviving output is exclusively secular.{{sfn|Reaney|1971|p=18}}{{refn|Reaney notes that although some of his motets could have been for worshipping [[Mary, mother of Jesus|Mary]], they were [[courtly love|(courtly) love]] songs at their core.{{sfn|Reaney|1971|p=18}}|group=n}} Regardless, Reaney notes that his unique mastery of both secular and sacred Western music is only precedented by the work of [[Adam de la Halle]].{{sfn|Reaney|1971|p=69}}

===Secular music===
The lyrics of Machaut's works almost always dealt with [[courtly love]]. A few works exist to commemorate a particular event, such as M18, "Bone Pastor/Bone Pastor/Bone Pastor." Machaut mostly composed in five genres: the lai, the virelai, the motet, the ballade, and the rondeau. In these genres, Machaut retained the basic ''formes fixes'', but often utilized creative text setting and [[cadence (music)|cadences]]. For example, most rondeau phrases end with a long [[melisma]] on the penultimate syllable. However, a few of Machaut's rondeaux, such as R18 "Puis qu'en oubli", are mostly syllabic in treatment.

Machaut's motets often contain sacred texts in the tenor, such as in M12 "Corde mesto cantando/Helas! pour quoy virent/Libera me". The top two voices in these three-part compositions, in contrast, sing secular French texts, creating interesting concordances between the sacred and secular. In his other genres, though, he does not utilize sacred texts.

===Sacred music===
{{Listen|filename= Machaut - Missa Notre Dame - Kyrie.ogg|title=''Kyrie'' from the ''Messe de Nostre Dame''|description=By Guillaume de Machaut, midi instrumental version|format=[[Ogg]]}}

Machaut's cyclic setting of the Mass, identified in one source as the ''[[Messe de Nostre Dame]]'' (''Mass of Our Lady''), was composed in the early 1360s probably for [[Rheims Cathedral]].  While not the first cyclic mass – the [[Tournai Mass]] is earlier – it was the first by a single composer and conceived as a unit.  Machaut was probably familiar with the Tournai Mass since Machaut's Mass shares many stylistic features with it, including textless interludes.

Whether or not Machaut's mass is indeed [[cyclic mass|cyclic]] is contested; after lengthy debate, musicologists are still deeply divided. However, there is a consensus that this mass is at best a forerunner to the later 15th-century cyclic masses by the likes of [[Josquin des Prez]]. Machaut's mass differs from these in the following ways: (1) he does not hold a [[tonal centre]] throughout the entire work, as the mass uses two distinct [[musical mode|modes]] (one for the Kyrie, Gloria, and Credo, another for Sanctus, Agnus and Ite missa est); (2) there is no extended melodic [[theme (music)|theme]] that clearly runs through all the movements, and the mass does not use the [[parody mass|parody]] technique; (3) there is considerable evidence that this mass was not composed in one creative act. The fact that the movements were placed together does not mean they were conceived as such.{{sfn|Keitel|1982|loc={{Page needed|date=March 2014}}}}

Nevertheless, the mass can be said to be stylistically consistent, and certainly the chosen chants are all celebrations of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Also adding weight to the claim that the mass is cyclic is the possibility that the piece was written or assembled for performance at a specific celebration. The possibility that it was for the coronation of [[Charles V of France|Charles V]], which was once widely accepted, is thought unlikely in modern scholarship. The composer's intention that the piece be performed as one entire mass setting makes the ''Messe de Nostre Dame'' generally considered a cyclic composition.