The Orlando Consort • The Fount of Grace (CD)

Guillaume de Machaut (c1300-1377), France’s most famous poet-composer of the fourteenth century, was probably the last to set exclusively his own texts to music in the tradition of the trouvères before him. On the other hand, he was one of the first to compose his love songs in polyphony. Machaut’s complete works are exceptionally well preserved in beautifully illuminated manuscripts, originally destined for wealthy noble patrons. For the public at large, Machaut is nowadays best known as the composer of the first polyphonic Mass, his marvellous Messe de Notre Dame. However, far from being a composer of predominantly religious works (the Mass remained his only liturgical composition), Machaut instead devoted most of his artistic efforts to the praise of courtly love, in allegorical dits (or stories, two of them being pseudo-autobiographical) and in lyrics with and without music—those set to music including lays, motets and chansons, both monophonic and polyphonic—virtually all of which deal with the joys and problems of love. Yet, within this idealized courtly world, there are also some peepholes, especially in his literary works, which give us a glimpse of the harsh reality of the times in which he lived. A handful of Machaut’s musical works, recorded here, even reveal in detail some of the disasters that befell France during his lifetime.