7.6 - Polyphony at the Cathedral of Reims: Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame

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Do curso por Yale University

Introdução à Música Clássica

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Yale University

Introdução à Música Clássica

1239 ratings

Using a simple and enjoyable teaching style, this course introduces the novice listener to the wonders of classical music, from Bach fugues to Mozart symphonies to Puccini operas.

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Music Back in the Day

We will cover a thousand years in musical evolution during this modules lectures! We'll start with the Middle Ages taking a look at its functional chants and dance music, then we’ll move to the period of the Renaissance, and finish off by listening to the ornate melodies of opera heard throughout the early Baroque period. From this, you’ll begin to see how advances in musical notation allowed compositions to become both more specific and more complex. These advances are ultimately responsible for focus being shifted away from the performers and towards the composers themselves.Along the way, we’ll highlight some of these musical inventors and innovators, such as Hildegard of Bingen and Johann Pachelbel. We’ll also have the unique opportunity to see (and in some cases even hear) many of the instruments that were popular during these different time periods. This will be a real treat, made possible with help from Yale instructor, Grant Herreid. Many thanks are owed to him!

7.1 - Introduction to the Middle Ages4:57

7.2 - Gregorian Chant7:09

7.3 - Monasteries and Convents6:06

7.4 - The Chant of Hildegard of Bingen4:43

7.5 - Early Polyphony7:14

7.6 - Polyphony at the Cathedral of Reims: Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame8:17

7.7 - Dance Music of the Court12:54

Conheça os instrutores

Craig Wright
Henry L & Lucy G Moses Professor of Music
Department of Music

[MUSIC]

In this segment we will see of the creation of of the means to control not

only pitch but

also rhythm allowed composers to create long and complex pieces.

And to do this, we'll take a virtual trip to France, first to Paris and

then a hundred miles out to the east in the Champagne region to the city of Reims.

Here you see, of course, the facade of the famous Notre Dame of Paris.

Let's take a look now, inside.

Here we see two images.

On the left the Choir of Notre Dame as it currently exists and

on the right as it existed in the Middle Ages with the stalls for

the clergy on either side in this large root screen which was

taken down during the revolution, There present.

The singers would actually come out in the middle of the choir.

Now here's a manuscript of the type of music,

actually is the music they were singing.

A four part composition.

Let me see if I can grab the tenor part here.

Here is that chant here, there's the first note.

That's the second note.

You can see the tenor holding out there.

We'll talk a little bit more about that later.

Okay, now let's go onto the city of Reims.

Here we see it as it looked in the 18th century.

And going back to this 17th century image, we'll see how Reims towered over the town.

Here is the cathedral here.

We're gonna focus on this street back up here because one of the clergy men,

name, Gilliam Dimesho, lived here.

And we're now going to go to the interior of Reims as it currently looks today.

The very beautiful and very unusual west facade of Reims.

And now the interior of Reims as it looked during the Middle Ages in

a drawing by the architectural historian Patrick Denois.

And you can see here, the stalls for the clergy on either side.

Actually this is a representation of the coronation of the king of France,

which occurred here at the Cathedral of Reims.

And note here in the center the large lectern.

That’s where the musicians would go when chant and polyphony was to be performed.

And here is our composer that we will be discussing today,

churchman Guillaume de Machaut In a 14th century likeness.

Actually, the earliest likeness that we have of a western composer.

And we're gonna focus now on a Mass by Machaut, Our Lady Mass of Machaut.

But let's see what's first involved in a musical Mass.

The mass, in terms of its musical parts, is divided into two types.

The proper of the mass, which you see listed on the left, and

the ordinary of the mass which you see listed on the right.

The proper is sung every day.

It's proper to that day.

On the Feast of St, John the Baptist for example, the introit,

the opening chant, might begin, Oh wonderful John who baptized Christ,

or whatever it might happen to be.

But, if we focus on the left side, we have just those chants that are sung everyday,

and we can extract those and put them here in a list that runs Kyrie,

Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei.

So those are the chants of the Ordinary of the Mass.

Now let's look at the tenor.

How did Machaut go about constructing this?

Well, he took a tenor voice, and he rhythmicized it as you can see here.

Originally, this went.

[MUSIC]

And so on.

But he rhythmicized it, as I said, into

[MUSIC]

And so on.

And then he wrote surrounding music for it.

Let's take a look at this next slide where he have the four parts of this,

the beginning and ending of the first Kyrie.

As you can see he has written a bass line, an alto line in the superius.

Actually originally they were called the tenor,

which held out the long notes there.

Then we had the contra tenor bassos.

Then we had the contra tenor altus.

And from that we get bass and alto.

If you've ever wondered why the alto is actually the high,

it's actually lower than the soprano.

It's because it was originally reckoned against the tenor.

So we have tenor, bass, alto, and then soprano.

And they were added roughly in that order.

And here we have a full score of that Kyrie.

You can see as it plays out through several measures.

And here now, we actually have Machaut's original manuscript.

We can't be sure that this was in his hand, that this is his musical hand, but

this is from the 14th century, all four parts there.

So we're going to listen to this, and if all goes well,

we'll follow along with the cursor on the screen here, the superious part.

The top part up here.

So let's see if we can get it going and we'll follow along.

[MUSIC]

Good, it worked.

So let's go back to that slide that we saw of the interior of the cathedral.

In his will Machaut stipulated that he wanted this mass that he composed,

in honor of the virgin to be sung in his memory, right here at this alter,

in the entrance of the choir on the south side.

This altar to the Virgin, statute of the Virgin, and

here it was sung every Saturday in perpetuity, or at least for centuries.

So, what's the point?

What's the take away here with the Machaut Mass?

Well, several things.

First, we're very close to seeing the labeling of voice parts that we know them.

This idea of soprano, alto, tenor and bass.

Also, we have a large split in terms of the range between soprano and bass.

Greater seniority, it means it sounds goods and we have a long piece,

20 to 25 minutes.

Because what he has done is to bind them all together by using a common

motive or theme.

One melody that sounds throughout all five movements.

[MUSIC]

That's the binding.

The adhesive there.

Most important we have the concept of a mass.

Other composers, later composers, Palestrina, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven,

Brookners, Travinski.

They composed in Palifini, the five sections of the ordinary of the mass.

As we've said, Kyrie, Gloria, Credo Sanctus, and Agnus Dei.

With his mass Machaut had set the standard.

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