Machaut Tutorial 4

Presentation topic: B12: Pour ce que tous

Articles referenced from Elizabeth Eva Leach (ed.), Machaut’s Music: New Interpretations
(Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2003):

• Leach, Elizabeth Eva, ‘Singing More about Singing Less: Machaut’s Pour ce que tous (B12),
111-24.
• Stone, Anne, ‘Music Writing and Poetic Voice in Machaut: Some Remarks on B12 and R14’,
125-38.

D
D

Refrain (se je chant mains que ne sueil)

[I sing less that I used to]

Transcription: Ludwig, Friedrich, ed. Guillaume de Machaut: Musikalische Werke — Vol. 1, 1926
( For full B12 score, see https://vmirror.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/a/a7/IMSLP12191-Machaut-Balladen.pdf )

B12: Pour ce que tous Owen Thomas [r. 25/02/2023]

For my presentation, I will be sharing the thoughts and analysis offered by both Anne Stone
and Elizabeth Eva Leach on Machaut’s Ballade 12 (B12). A transcription of the score in
modern notation is copied above (edited by Friedrich Ludwig), and I will use it to point out a
couple of analytical details covered in both Stone and Leach’s articles.

The ballade itself is copied into six of Machaut’s manuscripts with full text and music, with
these being manuscript C, Vg, B, A, G, and E — with its clearest in the Voir Dit, where it
serves as one of the ballades which Machaut sends within a letter to Toute Belle. Above all
however, it is one the clearest lyrics in his oeuvre which “self-consciously foregrounds the
poet’s role as a maker of songs” (Leach, 2003), and therefore is a musical work worthy of
analysis.

Before presenting her thoughts on the ballade’s most striking characteristics, Anne Stone
considers first the concepts of authorship and audience that are fundamental to Machaut’s
interpolation of music. By giving thought to ideas of musical notation’s poetic purposes and
capabilities, she provides a useful prologue to any kind of analysis. Preceding Stone’s argument
are two important notions:

1. The transitioning of authorial tradition from an oral to a written transmission highlights

2. The way that music is notated in a manuscript context, as with illuminations, can in
itself have an impact on the poetic narrative, and how certain aspects of the music are
interpreted by the work’s audience

The first of these is especially significant to the works of Machaut, as a contemporary writer
within this period of transition. Stone specifically recounts occurrences within the Remède de
Fortune and Voir Dit in order to illustrate this idea from the perspective of Machaut’s pseudo-
autobiographical narrator. In the first of these narrative dits, Machaut explains that his music
is “inscribed on [his] heart… a hundred times more accurate than any clerk could write out by
hand”, hence suggesting that the notation of a poem or song is a difficult transfer procedure of
envisioned writing to notated writing – and this plays directly into the similar notions of
musical notation, its purpose, and the importance of how it is presented.

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Secondly, regarding the impact of music notation, Stone concludes that Machaut’s copying of
musical score directly into his manuscripts infers that he intended them to be read by any reader
of the manuscript. She writes “Machaut was famously careful to collect his musical
compositions together with his literary works… suggesting that he considered his musical texts
to have the same kind of written validity as his poetic works” (Stone, 2003), and therefore
highlights the extent of thought required for the composition of notated music. By interpolating
these secondary forms of multimedia into his works and manuscripts, Machaut was exploiting
music as a new method of artistic experimentation in poetry – and this idea serves as an
important grounding for understanding how the music in B12 works.

Unlike the majority of Machaut’s ballades, rondeaus, and virelays, his use and variety of
musical notation in B12 is particularly unusual. Considering the range of note-types used in
the ballade—in this case everything from minims to (perfect) longs—the song’s mensuration
is overall definable as being in the major modus, with imperfect tempus and a major prolation.
This mensuration is extremely rare in Machaut’s polyphony, only occurring in five of his other
ballades (6, 11, 12, 16, and 25). Whilst on the one hand this major modus allows for the
exploitation of such an extensive rhythmic variety, this choice is a consciously archaic, as will
become a pattern in this particular ballade.

Machaut’s rhythmic choices in this music are clearest in the refrain – which is one of the most
visually striking elements to the copied notation of the ballade. To give it some important
context, the refrain—"se je chant mains que ne sueil” (meaning: I sing less than I used to)—is
a direct intertextual reference on Machaut’s part. This choice demonstrates Machaut’s
conscious authorial efforts to establish himself within the contemporary literary tradition, but
also acts as a key factor in the ballade’s poetic (and musical) meaning. Lyrically, this quote is
particularly ironic, given its original context in which the narrator stops singing in order to
indulge in his love for hunting. This is by no means the case here, as in this ballade the narrator
explains how he has stopped singing because he has received so much criticism towards his
sad, depressing songs. The irony and stark of this quoted refrain is not only found in the text
however, as its musical notation stands out visually on the page. Where the previous strophe
was primarily composed in minims and semibreves, the refrain is composed in much more
extended breves and longs. This compositional choice creates a clear tension and disjuncture
in the music, drawing attention to the quotation, and the refrain as a whole. (This is visible on
both the highlighted score above, and in its manuscript context as shown below in Figure 1).

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Figure 1: B12 in MS C, comparing the song notation (left) and the refrain notation (right)

The title of Leach’s article—Singing more about singing less—is aptly reflective of this refrain,
as the lyric “I sing less that I used to” is ironically paired (by Machaut) with the longest note
values of the score.

Another interesting feature of the ballade is the tenor part, which is another tool employed by
Machaut in order to “intensify the perception of major modus in the song” (Stone, 2003). For
much of the music, the tenor part accompanies the cantus in a repeated pattern, which
comprises of a breve, an imperfect long, and a perfect long. As with mensuration, this
patterning is archaic to Machaut’s style, akin to the Ars Antiqua style. However, Machaut
deviates away from this pattern at the end of the A section, causing another striking moment in
the progression of the ballade. At this point, the tenor part seems to join with cantus, moving
in breves and semibreves as the music drives towards the cadence. In the B section, this Ars
Antiqua-style pattern is not continued in the tenor part, instead breaking off into a more varied
contrapuntal accompaniment – which makes its return in the refrain even more audible and
striking.

Machaut also seems to employ some rather interesting harmony and tonality in this ballade,
with the B section presenting some particularly striking dissonances and tensions. Marked
above on the modern score with a [----D----] line marking are three instances of these
dissonances, with the first in bar 11 between the tenor C and cantus D, the second in bar twelve
between the tenor D and the cantus (appoggiatura) Eb, and the third in bar 18 between the tenor
B and the cantus Eb. The last of these is the most unusual and has caused many editorial issues,
hence the “b?” marking by Ludwig on the score above, and this would make the interval a

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standard 4th rather than an augmented one (a similar issue was also raised by Stone in her
article’s transcription).

As Leach considers in her article, the musical tensions and unusual features throughout B12
are a way in which Machaut not only demonstrates his poetic abilities, but also a way in which
he develops an interest for the notated music itself (from a reader perspective). This is
something which was not previously given attention to when musically interpolated poetry was
transmitted orally and not through written media. Something particularly interesting which
Leach points out is the interplay between the two voices in the opening of the A section. Where
we would expect an accompanying tenor part to underpin and highlight the cantus melody,
Machaut presents a more deviant tenor line here. Where the cantus begins with a breve, the
tenor quickly moves in semibreves and minims to a higher pitch than the cantus note – creating
a sense of intrigue and confusion in the listener’s perception of the music. This inversion of
parts is not resolved until the third bar of music, where the A section picks up both in terms of
rhythm and pitch.

To conclude, Machaut’s B12, which is structured in three very distinct and characterful
sections, presents us with a key piece of musical poetics for helping us to better understand
Machaut’s authorship and poetic intention within his interpolated dits. As both Leach and Stone
reflect on in their analyses of the work, the distinct and striking employment of Ars nova
musical notation, intertextuality and pastiche to antiquated styles, and contrapuntal interplay in
the music create an interesting and complex score which serves a much greater narrative
function than simply to convey a stage of narrative plot.

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