De toutes flours

The wistful love song De toutes flours was one of the most disseminated works by the foremost poet-composer of 14th-century France: Guillaume de Machaut. It’s a ballade—one of the set forms of French lyric poetry, often used to express lofty or ardent emotions. The poem consists of three eight-line stanzas, each of which ends with a refrain. The musical setting is as follows: two repeated sections set the first pair of stanzas and a contrasted one sets the final stanza. The allegorical text is typical of the courtly love tradition inherited from the Provençal troubadours. “Of all flowers” describes how the poet’s garden has been devastated by cruel Fortune, and only a single rose still blooms—a metaphor for the poet’s unwithering love. Machaut conveys the bittersweet words with yearning melodic motifs and expressive sonorities. The ballade survives in many manuscript copies where it appears in both three and four-part versions.