Page 74 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

FiguRE 4.3
The cathedral of Notre Dame of Paris, begun c. 1160, was one of the first to be built in the new Gothic style of architecture. Innovative polyphony was com- posed there as the building was being constructed.
arches, high ceiling vaults, flying buttresses, and richly colored stained glass.
Not only was Northern France home to the new Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages, but it was also the birthplace of a new style of music called polyphony. Polyphonic music involved multiple, independent voices, and with it came the need for a more precise musical notation. Because Gregorian chant was monophonic music in which rhythm played no important role, musicians had found they did not need to notate duration, just pitch. But polyphony required several independent singing parts. With many singing at once, how would the musicians know when to change to another pitch to make good harmony? Thus, during the thirteenth century musicians in France devised a system called mensural nota- tion (measured notation) to specify musical rhythm as well as pitch. To the note heads indicating pitch, musicians added various sorts of stems and flags to specify duration—stems and flags still with us today in our half, quarter, and eighth notes. Composers could now write for two, three, or four voices together, and each singer would know how long to sus-
tain his pitch.
Notre Dame of Reims
Thirteenth-century Paris was the first home of the new Gothic polyphony, but by the fourteenth century its primacy, both in music and architecture, was challenged by Reims (pronounced “Rance”). The city of Re- ims, one hundred miles east of Paris in the Champagne re- gion of France, boasted a cathedral (Figure 4.4) as impressive and, indeed, larger than the one that graced Paris. In the four- teenth century Reims benefited from the service of a poetical- ly and musically talented churchman, Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–1377). Judging by his nearly 150 songs and religious works, not only was Machaut (pronounced “ma-SHOW”) the most important composer of his day, he was equally esteemed as a poet. Today, historians of literature place him on a ped- estal next to his slightly younger English counterpart, Geof- frey Chaucer (c. 1340–1400), author of The Canterbury Tales. Indeed, Chaucer knew and borrowed heavily from the poetic
works of Machaut.
Machaut: Messe de Nostre Dame
Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame (Mass of Our Lady) is de-
servedly the best-known work in the entire repertoire of
FiguRE 4.4
Interior of the cathedral of Reims looking from floor to ceiling. The pillars carry the eye up to the ribbed vaults of the roof, creating a feeling of great upward movement, just as the Mass of Machaut, with four superimposed voices, has a new sense of verticality.<
52 chapter four music in the middle ages and renaissance
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