Messe de Nostre Dame

One of the masterpieces of medieval music, Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame (“The Mass of Our Lady”) has several claims to fame. It is the first complete setting of the mass by a known composer; a pioneering attempt to bring a degree of stylistic unity to a large-scale work; and one of the earliest and longest works written for four, rather than the more usual three, voices. Probably composed around 1363, its splendid style was designed to celebrate one of the four main feast days of the Virgin Mary. The text of the mass, as it was ordinarily celebrated, consisted of five main sections: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. Some of these had long texts (Gloria and Credo) while the rest were shorter and more concise. Machaut attempted to make each section last roughly the same time, so he adopted two different approaches. To get through the words of the “Gloria” and “Credo” quickly, he used a mostly syllabic style, with all the voices singing together. For the other sections, with fewer words, he used a melismatic style—with more notes per syllable. The music of the “Kyrie,” “Sanctus,” and “Gloria” centres on a plainsong melody sung in long notes by the tenor (which Machaut divided up into short phrases with the same rhythm using a technique known as isorhythm).