Fortune's demesne: the interrelation of text and music in Machaut's Il mest avis (B22), De fortune (B23) and two related anonymous balades*
Machaut's balades Il mest avis (hereafter B22) and De fortune (hereafter B23), adjacent in the music section of the Machaut manuscripts, form a diptych on the theme of Fortune. In relation to each other, their poetic texts offer complementary perspectives on the power of Fortune: B22 is static, detached in tone, a clerk commentating in a public sententious statement upon the political manifestations of Fortune; conversely, B23 is personal and dynamic, a spurned lady's personal testimony to the power of Fortune to change happiness into sorrow. Despite these contrasts, the two poems share a diction markedly different from that of the twenty-one balades that precede them in the music section.
Finding Fortune in Motet 13: insights on ordering and borrowing in Machaut's motets
ABSTRACT On first glance, Machaut's Tans doucement/Eins que ma dame/Ruina (M13) is a typical motet with few musical or textual anomalies. Perhaps this is why, with the exception of a brief article by Alice V. Clark, little extensive, individual study of M13 has been conducted. This article examines the musico-poetic cues for Fortune found in M13’s many forms of reversal, duality and upset order. The discovery of a new acrostic which references the Roman de Fauvel, whose interpolated motet Super cathedram/Presidentes in thronis/Ruina (F4) is the source of M13’s tenor, further supports a Fortune-based reading of this motet. M13 may therefore be included among the Fortune-prominent motets proposed by Anna Zayaruznaya and Jacques Boogaart (M12, M14 and M15). Understanding that Machaut intentionally ordered his motets, M13 fills a sequential gap, suggesting that M12–15 may serve as a meaningfully ordered group of Fortune-based motets. The acrostic's Fauvel reference also provides additional connections between M13 and F4, offering insight into ways Machaut may have responded to and cleverly cited his sources.
Papal music and musicians in late Medieval and Renaissance Rome
MUSIC IN THE PAPAL CHAPEL IN THE 14TH, 15TH, AND 16TH CENTURIES THE PAPAL CHOIR AS INSTITUTION STUDIES OF INDIVIDUALS