Guillaume de Machaut - Messe pour Notre Dame

[chanteuze4ange]

j'ai beaucoup les chorale chaque dimanche je vais a l'église ( alors que j'ai 15 ans)

j'adord

[pawsoned]

the audio quality totally sucks!

[Aiofe09]

OMG this is wonderful

[glishev]

I don't know about applauding in a chursh but if I listen this piece once more, I'm gonna weep before my laptop. Pure delight.

[cruelmaggi]

@glishev before ur laptop alright. never saw a machine doin that lol

[glishev]

@cruelmaggi

In front of my laptop, OK :)

[orellanavallejo]

Non ci sono I solisti di Solesmes!!!

Sono lo Ensemble Gilles Binchois:

Carlos Mena

José Hernandez Pastor

Stephan Van Dick

Hervé Lamy

Jacques Bona

Dominique Vellard (dir.)

[wowzers5432109]

I like how these songs end in silence and not applause, the awe is too great

[okamilune]

i think that is because the whole composition isn't over yet.

[wowzers5432109]

the sanctus is over when this vid ends. then they start another song.

[okamilune]

Right. but if they are performing the entire mass then it is not over yet. It is just like movements in a sympony, you dont applaud until all movements are completed. same with a mass composition i would say. or, if this is during a church service no one would applaud anyway.

[starbreez3]

hahaha yes ofcourse, they dont applaud in a church xD crazy idea lol

[okavang20]

Of course we can applaud in a church. The last part of this mass is the agnus dei. The audience will applaud at this time

[ChesterEldar]

wonderful performance, wonderful music

[davecoleman12]

Fantastic, complex harmonies for such early music. You can just shut your eyes and soak in this soundworld..

[musicalidea]

Also, there were two other elements of creative lassitude that were available to Machaut, both of which he richly exploits in this Sanctus: 1) when and how to use the varying rhythmic modes (different patters of duple and triple division, which would result in an even or dotted pattern within a given phrase) and 2) voice blocking and doubling: when to use 2 or three voices instead of 4...much of the rich antiphonal textures that we find from Josquin to Byrd relies on varying this parameter.

[SecretTheatre]

I was speaking in the most general of terms, there's no need for an essay. :)

[NSAnegrean]

conductor

?!?!?!? intersting

[princeandras]

Beautiful music. Machaut is among the greatest of the old times.

[14Bach]

Messe de Nostre Dame, Mass of Our Lady, was, according to legend, composed in 1364, and was the first mass to musically unite the ordinary (which includes the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, and the dismissal Ite Missa EstIte Missa Est). It is unusual for adding a fourth voice, a contratenor in the same range as the tenor.

[jesemus33]

machaut was the bach on hes days

[guitarslim56]

Bach was the Machaut of his day.

[janithw]

Who are the performers and where did this take place?

[eref2000]

Ensemble Gilles Binchois. It was broadcast by Mezzo some years ago. Can't remember the venue/event.

[xauxana]

Gracias por colgarlo. Suena muy bien. ¿Qué estará componiendo Machaut en el cielo?

[lovelymess]

Extremely well done! Thanks for the post.

I love the double leading tone cadence. One of the most potent harmonic gestures in the history of music.

[SecretTheatre]

Nothing to do with harmony. Machaut had no conception of 'chords' or harmony in the modern sense. It's all about counterpoint, voice leading, and the most logical way (according to the theory of the time) for voices to move relative to one another at a cadence. He didn't sit down and experiment with chords and think, 'Oh, that sounds magnificent and spine-tingling'. Although I agree, it IS a truly wonderful musical effect.

[lovelymess]

True, but Medieval composers were aware of vertical sonorities. They would not have called them "chords" but they knew how to stack intervals together to create dissonance and consonance according to the tastes of their own time period.

The medieval double leading tone cadence is one of the stock sonorites of the period.

[SecretTheatre]

Precisely my point - they thought in terms of intervals between voices, not 'abstract' vertical entities. Mediaeval counterpoint is not the textural 'fleshing out' of a sequence of abstract verticalities, as much later counterpoint is. Their musical thinking was linear, not vertical.

A 'stock sonority' is precisely what the double leading note cadence is not. It's a logical consequence of certain theologically-prescribed musical rules. It is only a 'sonority' to the modern ear.

[SecretTheatre]

Wouldn't want to get into a huge argument over this rather subtle point, however! :) I feel quite strongly about it, as a teacher of harmony and counterpoint, since so many of my students seem unable to think naturally in terms of voices rather than chords. This becomes a big obstacle when they attempt to write decent counterpoint.

[lovelymess]

As a composer who drags the romantic subjectivity of the post atonal world into just about everything I hear I completely understand the philosophy of your argument.

I cannot imagine however that Machaut did not consider the vertical aspect of counterpoint.

I will change my term "stock sonority" to "frequent vertical occurance".

Also, given your expertise it would be an honor for me to have you listen to some of my own music as posted on my channel page.

[SecretTheatre]

Oh, thank you very much :) I certainly will.

[musicalidea]

Yet you are also mistaken to a degree at least as regards methodical rigidity...because SO much was still up to discretion. For instance take the "chord" - intervalic consonance - that occurs at the very end of the 2nd "Sanctus" 0:17 - 0:29. Given the "voice leading" and "contrapuntal" rules of the time, Machaut could have gone in at least 13 different directions at 0:27 and by no means had to land on the minor 3rd at the top of the stack, as he chose to.

[chandlerdu]

really thxxx!

its awesome!

[alexegeviz]

Machaut..definitely one of the greatest composers ever..

[kenavo2103]

@alexegeviz Certainly the greatest medieval composer who influenced the music not only of his time but for over a century. Beautiful doesn't even start to describe his music!

[Piobuko]

thanks for uploading Guillaume :D

[BatesJr]

It is even more amazing and moving to find Machaut's Mass on YouTube, than it is to find Bach's Mass in B minor or Musical Offering. Grazie mile.

[arok100]

magnifico. mi riporta in paradiso !