# Machaut - Messe de Nostre Dame



## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Guillaume de Machaut's 14th-century _Messe de Nostre Dame_, one of the oldest surviving works by a single composer in Western music, is currently on the 24th tier of the Talk Classical Community's Favorite and Most Highly Recommended Works.

Wikipedia has an article about it, which features some decent if compressed background and analysis. The only other thread on the site I could find about the work was this one: Guillaume de Machaut - messe de nortre-dame best version?, which features some recording recommendations.

The main questions of this thread are: *What do you like about this work? Do you love it? Why? What do you like about it? Do you have any reservations about it? Is this a work that you actually enjoy listening to, or is it more of an antique curiosity?* And of course, what are your favorite recordings?

Personally, I find this one of the most beautiful pieces of music composed before 1600. It captures me with its poetry, delicacy, and intricate polyphony. You can see the roots of Western music shooting up before your ears as you listen. For me it's not just the "oldness" of it that's interesting - I really do think it is amazing music! Also, shameless plug...I recently wrote a blog post about this work, the first in a series I'm planning on writing about what I think are the 20 greatest musical works of all time. Though ambitious and opinionated, I invite you to follow my thoughts if you're at all interested Anyway, I just think early music and especially medieval music doesn't get enough exposure on here, so I thought I'd create a reference thread for a pre-1600 work.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

As far as I know there are five complete medieval masses - Machaut, Tournai, Barcelona, Toulouse and the recently discovered Sorbonne. I’ve heard all but the Missa Sorbonne - I only know it exist because of a note written by Lucien Kandel. 

Toulouse and Barcelona come from the south; Machaut, Tournai and I guess Sorbonne from the north. I once read that scholars say that the Avignon papacy was a great stimulus for new music throughout France. What I don’t know is what sort of music was being composed in Rome at the time. 

Last year, Dominique Vellard released a recording of something he called “la messe d’Apt” - it’s a compilation of attributed mass movements, attributed to different composers, in a manuscript in Apt. Apt is near Aix, so South, but some of the mass movements are attributed to Philip de Vitry, evidence again of a lively transfer of ideas.


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## josquindesprez (Aug 20, 2017)

I love listening to this mass, though to be honest the Graindelavoix recording is probably what does it for me. I've heard some others that don't have such a primal (maybe?) sound to them and they're pleasant but don't bowl me over.


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## Simplicissimus (Feb 3, 2020)

I just ordered a CD of this work, which I have neglected far too long. I’ll get back to this thread after I receive the disc and listen to it a couple of times. BTW, it seems there’s controversy concerning the interpretation and performance of this Messe, with competing recordings that are very different from each other, right?

An aside: I find it great that Medieval music is receiving more attention than it did during the heyday of the early music revival, when we went heavily for Renaissance and early Baroque stuff.


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## Scott in PA (Aug 13, 2016)

I've loved this piece for a long time. Only recently, about 2-3 weeks ago, I came across a YT performance of the Gloria by the group Gesualdo Six. The way the polyphonic style suddenly comes to a halt at the mention of "Jesu Christe" with homophonic chords has always been striking and is captured well in this performance:






(I wish they had recorded the whole piece.)


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Yesterday I listened to some mass movements attributed to Ciconia, Gloria 3 and Credo 4, Ciconia was born at about the time that Machaut died. Just speaking on the basis of superficial impressions of how the music sounds, it’s hard for me to imagine that Ciconia wasn’t aware of the Machaut mass. Machaut worked in Reims, Ciconia in Padua, that’s quite a distance.


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## Sad Al (Feb 27, 2020)

I have the Orlando Consort (which is just playing) and Lucien Kandel recordings. I like early polyphony, so I like this work too. But I clearly prefer some other works, like Dufay's isorythmic motets, Gombert's Missa quam Pulchra es and some Ockeghem masses and Pérotin & L'École de Notre Dame (Perotin's music is of course much older than Machaut's and even more ascetic).


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Scott in PA said:


> I've loved this piece for a long time. Only recently, about 2-3 weeks ago, I came across a YT performance of the Gloria by the group Gesualdo Six. The way the polyphonic style suddenly comes to a halt at the mention of "Jesu Christe" with homophonic chords has always been striking and is captured well in this performance:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That's a distinctive performance. Lots of detail. Expressive detail. Machaut meets stile moderno.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

As a result of the bubonic plague, which some of his contemporaries were taking in stride by hosting huge parties, the prudent Machaut avoided society completely for some months, allowing him to survive. Unfortunately, Machaut was among those who blamed the Jews for the Black Death and his isolation did not prevent him from celebrating the massacres of Jews that were taking place across Europe. As he left isolation, Machaut took up a position of the canon at the Cathedral at Reims. When he arrived on the job, he brought a freshly composed piece as a show of devotion to his new position: the Messe de Nostre Dame.

In the prologue to his complete works Machaut writes that “Music is a science which asks that one laugh, and sing, and dance. It does not care for melancholy, nor for the man who is melancholy.” The avoidance of melancholy was something with direct physical relevance, as according to Galenic medical theory an overabundance of black bile led both to sadness and to illnesses such as plague, so to remain in good health, it was important to remain “sanguine” by engaging in activities that counterbalanced melancholy and promoted red blood. Certainly a useful message for these days.


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## caracalla (Feb 19, 2020)

When I first heard the Messe de Nostre Dame, I was just appalled. Also very disappointed, as I'd approached it with sky-high expectations.

That was over 40 years ago now, when I was a student. Even people like Palestrina were off the beaten track in those days, let alone anything much earlier, so it was an exciting turn of affairs when I finally got to hear Machaut. I had no idea what to expect, really. I knew the MdND wouldn't sound anything like the music of the High Renaissance, but I did anticipate that it would be as good in a different way. I suppose I had in mind something like the musical equivalent of Chartres Cathedral. A whole new landscape of musical wonders opening up...

And then the shocking actuality. Horrible. Almost unendurable. Crude, barbaric and ugly - and not just ordinarily ugly, but plug-ugly in an oddly precious way I found quite repellent. Of course, I gave it few more hearings, but at that time just couldn't get on with it. Ordinarily, that would have been an end of it, as I've never had much patience with music I detest on early acquaintance. But the MdND had been a crushing disappointment, and it rankled. Over the years (decades) I kept coming back to it from time to time as new versions emerged, and eventually it did click and how. Nevertheless, there's nothing else I've been strongly motivated to like that I've found harder to crack. 

My favourite version by far (dons steel helmet) is the Peres on Harmonia Mundi. I'd learned to tolerate, even quite like, the MdND by the time this came out (mid 90s), but it was this disc which turned me into an enthusiast and finally delivered what I'd been hoping to find 20 years earlier. Yes, I know the HIP people say that whatever the MdND originally sounded like, it couldn't have sounded anything like this, and I can buy that (they know far more about it than I do and I find their arguments persuasive). Still, with all due respect, I don't particularly care about Reims in 1362, and I don't think Peres does either. 

I was a staunch partisan of HIP in the days when it was still very controversial, but I've never been much interested in the antiquarianism per se; only in its ability to supply (substantial) musical added-value. Same goes for 'post-HIP' practice (outfits like L'Arpeggiata), and I would put Peres' MdND in this category. Be all that as it may, I find it hugely rewarding, even enthralling, to listen to, and for all it's Corsican-Islamic-Greekery, it gives me a far stronger sense of Gothic magnificence than any other version I've ever heard. If it isn't authentic (and I accept it isn't), it jolly well ought to be.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

caracalla said:


> When I first heard the Messe de Nostre Dame, I was just appalled. Also very disappointed, as I'd approached it with sky-high expectations.
> 
> That was over 40 years ago now, when I was a student. Even people like Palestrina were off the beaten track in those days, let alone anything much earlier, so it was an exciting turn of affairs when I finally got to hear Machaut. I had no idea what to expect, really. I knew the MdND wouldn't sound anything like the music of the High Renaissance, but I did anticipate that it would be as good in a different way. I suppose I had in mind something like the musical equivalent of Chartres Cathedral. A whole new landscape of musical wonders opening up...
> 
> ...


That's a lot of backstory just to announce your controversial favorite!  Anyway you've piqued my interest. What exactly is so un-HIP about the Peres recording?


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## Lilijana (Dec 17, 2019)

This is my favourite pre-wwii composition alongside wagner's Ring.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

flamencosketches said:


> What exactly is so un-HIP about the Peres recording?


Although there's a score for the mass, we are uncertain about how the singers would have turned it into sound. Their sonority, their vocality, the types of embellishments they would have made etc. - these things are not well understood. The problem is that in those days singing technique was passed on orally from generation to generation through fraternities of singers, and rarely written down.

There are still fraternities of chanters in Europe, some of which have roots which go back into the distant past, though not in Northern France unfortunately. Peres decided to use singers from these fraternities, singers who were familiar with their ancient local traditions, to help him to make sense of old and enigmatic scores like the Machaut.

The singers he used were skilled in the singing practices from Greece and Corsica, and there's no evidence that their way of making a noise resembled what Machaut would have heard in Reims.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Here's an interesting one, for countertenor, two baritones and a viol.


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## caracalla (Feb 19, 2020)

flamencosketches said:


> That's a lot of backstory just to announce your controversial favorite! Anyway you've piqued my interest. What exactly is so un-HIP about the Peres recording?


My reading of the OP is that it is primarily after personal reactions to this music, and only secondarily about favourite recordings. That said, the available approaches are now so radically different, that people could easily be repulsed through no fault of Machaut's. With this one, we're an awful long way from Karajan vs Solti vs Abbado in Beethoven's 5th. Anyone new to the MdND should certainly shop around.

Wrt Peres and the HIPsters, I think their main beef is that Peres grossly overestimates the impact of Byzantine and Islamic performance practices on Western Europe. Yes, they concede, these were more advanced cultures, at various (generally earlier) times they certainly had a huge impact on the culture of Southern Europe, and their influence sometimes spread much further afield. But the Middle Ages is a very big place, both in time and space. So far as music is concerned, if either of these influences ever radiated as far north and west as Reims, they were likely to have been very faint by the time they got there, and there is no good reason to suppose any vestiges remained as late as the 14th century when Machaut was strutting his stuff.

A second objection is that even if Peres is right about this, itself highly improbable, he has no business trying to relate these supposed influences to the living traditions of Greek Orthodox and Moorish singing, and it is no use employing Corsicans as middlemen. We have absolutely no idea how any of these things sounded 650 years ago, and every reason to suppose that they have morphed very significantly over such a long stretch of time. Both these arguments strike me as valid.

There is another argument that the florid ornamentation employed by Peres (a major feature of his interpretation) is hopelessly anachronistic. Apparently this was quite common in the 13th century, but had fallen out of favour by the 14th. One Johannes de Muris, a contemporary theoretician, tends to be called in aid here. It seems JdM had a down on ornamentation in general, and absolutely forbade it in complex polyphony. I think this one is weaker. The mediaeval intelligentsia were nothing if not disputatious, and we shouldn't just assume that a big fish like Machaut was willing to be bossed about by the Murises of his world. Possibly he hung on every word, possibly he thought JdM was talking through a hole in his head. We just don't know.

Which pretty much sums up the whole situation. The HIPsters are willing to concede Peres' fundamental premise, which is that any score from this period cannot be taken as a finished product but only as a point of departure. In practice, they tend to award Brownie points to people like Parrott and Hillier who stick pretty close to the script. They do not explain why this safety-first approach should necessarily bring us any closer to how Machaut actually expected the MdND to be performed, and I personally doubt that it does. I'm willing to concede that the original probably didn't sound very much like Peres' Ensemble Organum, but it would take an awful lot to persuade me that it sounded very much like the Taverner Choir or Oxford Camerata either. The difference seems to be that the latter fall within the (actually very wide) bounds of what most musicologists currently consider feasible, while Peres strays beyond. In practice, I don't think it makes much difference. The gaps in our knowledge are just too wide and the target too small.

Bottom line, I think, is that chasing the chimera of authenticity is pretty futile in this case, so you might as well go with whatever does it for you. Peres does it for me.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

^Thanks for the write up. For what it's worth, I agree. I've never gave a damn about "authenticity" or "anachronism" in music and I don't think there's any way to measure either of those things with any objectivity. That being said, the samples of that Peres recording did not exactly blow me away. Now, I'm not familiar with modern Grecian or Corsican chant, and surely that ignorance will have colored my reaction, but it sounded to me like a chorus of untrained, nasally-inflected modern rock singers :lol: But as you said, anyway, "whatever does it for you". I suspect I will probably get the recording at some point and spend some time with it; I'm a sucker for controversial interpretations. 

The only Machaut MdND recording I have is the Oxford Camerata under Jeremy Summerly, one of the "playing it safe" choices you mention. I like it well enough but I would agree that it's probably nothing like what Machaut would have heard.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

caracalla said:


> Wrt Peres and the HIPsters . . .


Do you think that Pérès was presenting the performance as HIP, or just as an interesting experiment?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

flamencosketches said:


> ^sounded to me like a chorus of untrained, nasally-inflected modern rock singers :.


What's wrong with that?

The singers in Reims cathedral had to fill a large space, they probably did belt it out a bit. a visceral rock music style could well be a good thing.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

I've heard a handful of versions, of which I liked the Summerly/Oxford best, even though it's not "authentic" - I like how the cathedral-type reverb magnifies the voices. Some of the others sound too strained and even operatic (like the pioneering Deller Consort recording), and I really do not like adding background instruments, which seems cheesy to me.

caracalla, very interesting thoughts on your personal experiences. When I first heard it, I can't say I was as repulsed as you were, but I was expecting something ethereal and beautiful like a Palestrina or Josquin mass, and the more abrasive edges to the music, the chromaticism; really took me by surprise. Now with several repeated listens, I find the majority of it awestrikingly beautiful in its sparse discipline and expression. Mainly the Kyrie, Agnus Dei, and Sanctus; the second two movements seem a bit too austere for me. And yes, the point of these threads (as member science would tell you) is to provide "reference" material for the TC Community's Favorite and Most Highly Recommended Works; to gather members' thoughts on the work into one place. But I totally agree with flamenco about "authenticity" in performance. I honestly think that sometimes it's used as a charade to suck the life out of music and drain it of personal artistry and interpretation. Many times it works to great effect (I'm definitely not anti-HIP), but sometimes I find the results simply idiotic (like Goebel's Brandenburg concerti, what's the point of that?) Now, I have not dove very deep into comparing performances of early music, so I can't speak fairly about that. But just my opinion.


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## caracalla (Feb 19, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Do you think that Pérès was presenting the performance as HIP, or just as an interesting experiment?


I don't know, but I'd be prepared to bet quite a lot on the latter. I suspect he knew what he wanted to do, then mined the evidence to supply whatever musicological justification he could squeeze out of it. Rejecting the probable for what just might have been possible, and so on.

Obviously musicologists trained primarily as historians would take a very different approach to the evidence, and I don't think it's surprising some of them have been quite harshly critical.

Still, what is more important in this case, historical verity or art? They would say history; I think Peres would say art and I would agree with him. After all, it doesn't really matter what the MdND actually sounded like in 1362 as we will never know.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Mandryka said:


> What's wrong with that?
> 
> The singers in Reims cathedral had to fill a large space, they probably did belt it out a bit. a visceral rock music style could well be a good thing.


Nothing wrong with it. It's just different. As a guy coming from a punk/rock background I find it more than a little interesting. But I can see why some would find it grating.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

flamencosketches said:


> Nothing wrong with it. It's just different. As a guy coming from a punk/rock background I find it more than a little interesting. But I can see why some would find it grating.


One of the things that has come up in recent performance of very old music like the Machaut is this. When you present it to a modern audience, because it's so old, it should sound _strange_. It should jolt and grate. I mean, it would just be wrong for the audience to feel comfortable about hearing music in 2020 which was written in 1320, because 700 years is so far away, it is alien, it is other.

So, as much as I enjoy that chamber performance with the viol from LA that I posted earlier this morning, there's something strange about making it so sweet and easy for us now.

Colonialism is a relevant concept here. When the French occupied Algeria as a colony their aim was to transform it into a country with enlightenment values, French enlightenment values. There was a sort of cultural take-over, and a suppression of native culture.

If you sing the Machaut mass in a way which sounds sweet to C21 ears, a way which sounds a bit like Bach or Schubert, you may be colonising the past with the present.

I say this: let's relish otherness, difference. Let's avoid uniformity.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Mandryka said:


> One of the things that has come up in recent performance of very old music like the Machaut is this. When you present it to a modern audience, because it's so old, it should sound _strange_. It should jolt and grate. I mean, it would just be wrong for the audience to feel comfortable about hearing music in 2020 which was written in 1320, because 700 years is so far away, it is alien, it is other.
> 
> So, as much as I enjoy that chamber performance with the viol LA that I posted earlier this morning, there's something strange about making it so sweet and easy for us now.
> 
> ...


So is this the conclusion to come out of that logic: make it sound strange by any means possible?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

flamencosketches said:


> So is this the conclusion to come out of that logic: make it sound strange by any means possible?


Music making is about experimenting. Does that begin to answer your question? I mean some experiments produce inspired performances, ones where the musicians have bought in and found new fresh things, and where the audience have been taken along.

Some experiments fall flat.


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## Lilijana (Dec 17, 2019)

From what I've been able to discover, most HIP musicians these days cherry pick information to justify their personal laundry list of interpretative choices without really looking at the scores themselves for the information they need. With music as old as Machaut, however, taking a look at extramusical sources would be a good informative guide up to a point, but possibly because there is no uninterrupted pedagogical history of performing medieval music in conservatories. I guess the historical distance that comes from that creates a big cultural distance as well, creating something comparable to a 'culture shock' when heard by a listener unfamiliar with the style.

In any case, I love Pérès's recording of Messe de Nostre Dame because I think there's a great many interpretative choices that work wonderfully no matter if it's HIP or not. The timbre, I think, is lovely, but furthermore the varying overtone resonances at different parts of each singer's register draws attention to little musical details, makes each vocal part a long connected line within a larger polyphonic texture without homogenising the sound (which would otherwise obscure the textural detail present in the composition and even more in the performance).


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## caracalla (Feb 19, 2020)

Allegro Con Brio said:


> When I first heard it, I can't say I was as repulsed as you were, but I was expecting something ethereal and beautiful like a Palestrina or Josquin mass.


That's interesting, because I wasn't expecting that at all. I was expecting Machaut to be as dissimilar from Palestrina as Gothic architecture from Renaissance architecture - ie, just as impressive, but in a very different way. And I was mighty curious to find out what way that might be. Something a lot spikier? Surely less mellifluous? Musical analogues of arched windows and flying buttresses?

I'm glad you brought up Deller. I thought the original culprit might have been him, but wasn't sure (the recording never belonged to me). I've now been motivated to hunt this down on Spotify, and it was indeed Deller - I'd know that 'Christe' anywhere. Makes Machaut sound ridiculous. Still, godawful though this is, it no longer gets as badly up my nose as it did in my youth. I suppose that's because I now know it doesn't have to be this way, and it isn't ruining my adolescent fantasies of buried Gothic treasure.

Summerly's is an excellent version if you like that 'Oxford' sound; so are Hillier's and Parrott's (in this ballpark, my own pick would be Hillier). These seem to garner most of the plaudits from the critics, and plenty of ordinary punters swear by them too. I'm a big fan of the Oxford sound in Renaissance music, where the results are often sublime, but it doesn't work so well for me in this stuff. Too refined and well-mannered. I suppose I just prefer my Gothic with a few rough edges and a bit of attitude.

If I do happen to be in the mood for beauteous Machaut, I reach for Bonnardot with Obsidienne, who take it at a higher pitch. This isn't one of the better-known MdNDs, but it's easy enough to find on Spotify or YouTube. If you want a quick sampler, try the first Kyrie.

Your comments on HIP are well taken. It seems that most people here are not purists, but only into HIP insofar as it delivers the goods, which it so often does. Happily, in most early music (which in my book includes the early Baroque), a very wide range of treatments can lay claim to historical justification, and even the post-HIPsters can run a long way with the ball without grossly transgressing the composers' intentions (this applies particularly to the secular music). I suppose that's what makes this field so exciting. As well as the ever-expanding repertoire, there's a steady stream of done-over stuff springing back to life wholly transformed and reinvigorated, often by brand-new groups of young musicians eager to make their mark. Performance really does matter enormously.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

caracalla said:


> As well as the ever-expanding repertoire, there's a steady stream of done-over stuff springing back to life wholly transformed and reinvigorated, often by brand-new groups of young musicians eager to make their mark. Performance really does matter enormously.


Certainly. And that's what I think the HIP movement today is doing - "transforming and reinvigorating" music, not performing it "authentically." I have no problem with it; some of my favorite recordings are HIP while most of them are not, because I find HIP performance to often be clinical, mechanical, and strip the element of personality from the music. I am automatically skeptical of anyone claiming to know the composer's intentions, which is really quite a sanctimonious attitude. If HIPsters would simply say, "This is a fresh new look at the music" rather than "This is what the music is supposed to sound like," I would be a bit less annoyed. As far as Machaut, I haven't explored enough performances to really say what I prefer, and I'm not even really sure what "authenticity" means in early music performance - I recall the Tallis Scholars being described as such; are they authentic? Anyway, I really appreciate your thoughts - great stuff to chew on


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## Simplicissimus (Feb 3, 2020)

My CD arrived today and I spent some quality time listening to it. In fact, I had a rather major musical experience with it today. This music appeals to me greatly. It was much more listenable and engaging that I expected. The polyphony and some of the rhythms were somewhat familiar to me from other early music (later, of course), but the chromaticism and harmonies were not familiar. It was extremely interesting and refreshing.

I am not knowledgeable enough to comment on the details of the composition or compare the interpretation I am experiencing to others. What I can do is say a couple of things about the recording I am now enjoying.

It is the Ensemble Musica Nova under the direction of Lucien Kandel. The recording was made in April 2010 at the Abbaye de Royaument, Asnières-sur-Oise. The Messe was performed by nine singers and a Gothic organ. I think the credits will be legible in the below photo of the back cover of the album. It is on the French Aeon label.

The sound quality is excellent. There is just enough reverb to give the performance a Medieval ambience while still sounding tasteful to my modern ears. I find the vocal performance simply brilliant. The organ comes in between the parts of the Mass in a highly ornamented style.

The CD also contains works by other Medieval composers and it comes with a well-written booklet in French and English describing how Lucien Kandel researched the Messe and arrived at the interpretation given in this performance.

After listening to this CD some more, I will look around on the Web for some other examples. This could easily turn into a mini-hobby for me.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I like this music taken exceptionally slowly like Kandel, so you have time to smell the roses. And I’m really fond of the organ in the Kyrie. I saw him perform the Missa Barcelona like that in concert.


One annoying thing (I’m going from memory here, I could be doing him an injustice) is that in the booklet, his tame musicologist (I forget his name now) says that he’s got some evidence to support the idea that the tempos were so slow in early performances. But he doesn’t say what the evidence is.

Kandel presents the mass as a suit, rather than interspersing chant or motets or instrumental music. I’m not sure what I think about that.

To me it sounds like he’s put two on a part - somehow the volume of the sound clashes with the intimacy created by the slow tempos.


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## caracalla (Feb 19, 2020)

Allegro Con Brio said:


> I'm not even really sure what "authenticity" means in early music performance - I recall the Tallis Scholars being described as such; are they authentic?


Well, authenticish I suppose. Maybe. Certainly enough to please me (the TS have often been my go-to in Renaissance). But if you're going to employ women in early sacred music - manifestly anachronistic - you can't hope to satisfy the purists. Not that Peter Phillips would worry about that; he's no fanatic.

Actually this used to be a major issue, and I was once quite adamant about the need to use boys in this repertoire. That's because the women had all been trained to do much later stuff, and the resultant creamy gurgling was all wrong for this music. I mean that was one instance where the use of 'modern instruments' was a serious spoiler, at least to my ears. Once the music schools started pumping them out with a whiter tone and much less affected delivery, the problem pretty much went away.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Tallis Scholars . . . are they authentic?


No. Peter Philips doesn't believe it's a good idea, because he thinks that what's acceptable to modern ears is not the same as what was acceptable to c16 listeners. He's written a paper on this, "Beyond Authenticity" in Fallows and Knighton (eds.) _Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music_ (Dent, London, 1992)


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## Simplicissimus (Feb 3, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> I like this music taken exceptionally slowly like Kandel, so you have time to smell the roses. And I'm really fond of the organ in the Kyrie. I saw him perform the Missa Barcelona like that in concert.
> 
> One annoying thing (I'm going from memory here, I could be doing him an injustice) is that in the booklet, his tame musicologist (I forget his name now) says that he's got some evidence to support the idea that the tempos were so slow in early performances. But he doesn't say what the evidence is.
> 
> ...


Kandel's "tame musicologist" (I like that!), Gerard Geay, atually doesn't say anything about the tempi; what he has to say concerns Machaut's ideas about mode, that is, his use of sharps and flats and the chromatic sonority he achieves. To me, his most interesting point is that, "...all the accidentals that singers could perform were not notated in the works of the Middle Ages... they had to be added during the performance." What they added specifically is the characteristic "double leading tone cadences." Again, it's not all that clear from the sources how to perform this music!

Kandel himself wrote some background comments, too, and he himself says, "Reading from the manuscript places the singer in a world of long note values with ternery divisions (modus perfectus), which automatically suggests a longer breath and a more spacious performance." I cannot claim to understand this, but maybe it's this that you remember with respect to an attempt to justify the slow tempi of this performance.

To my understanding, there are in the sources four vocal parts, and in this performance there are nine singers -- doubled countertenors, tenors, and basses, and tripled sopranos. Kandel doesn't offer any justification for this, but I can imagine the piece would sound a lot different with four singers. The female sopranos might be a stumbling block for those who don't think women performed this kind of music in Machaut's time.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

seitzpf said:


> Kandel's "tame musicologist" (I like that!), Gerard Geay, atually doesn't say anything about the tempi; what he has to say concerns Machaut's ideas about mode, that is, his use of sharps and flats and the chromatic sonority he achieves. To me, his most interesting point is that, "...all the accidentals that singers could perform were not notated in the works of the Middle Ages... they had to be added during the performance." What they added specifically is the characteristic "double leading tone cadences." Again, it's not all that clear from the sources how to perform this music!
> 
> Kandel himself wrote some background comments, too, and he himself says, "Reading from the manuscript places the singer in a world of long note values with ternery divisions (modus perfectus), which automatically suggests a longer breath and a more spacious performance." I cannot claim to understand this, but maybe it's this that you remember with respect to an attempt to justify the slow tempi of this performance.
> 
> To my understanding, there are in the sources four vocal parts, and in this performance there are nine singers -- doubled countertenors, tenors, and basses, and tripled sopranos. Kandel doesn't offer any justification for this, but I can imagine the piece would sound a lot different with four singers. The female sopranos might be a stumbling block for those who don't think women performed this kind of music in Machaut's time.


Thanks for checking. It was indeed that comment about longer breaths that I half remembered.

Embellishment by flattering notes at certain points is a major topic of research, I've been to lectures about it, it's complicated, and I don't understand modal theory well enough to comment.

Geay prepared the editions for Kandel's recording of all four of Ockeghem's Cuiusvis Toni masses, and it's presumably his ideas about musica ficta (accidentals as ornaments) which inspired the recording. I'd like to give it more attention than I have. It's not a mass which has really inspired me up to now.

By the way, when I listened to Kandel's Machaut mass the other day, I felt that it was too heavy in the top voice, and now I see that he tippled the women and doubled the men.


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## Guest (Apr 9, 2020)

I remember studying this work at university (Musicology) decades ago and can't remember whether the matter was resolved as to whether it was accompanied by instrument/s or a capella at the time of performance. Those wonderful harmonies and the use of hocket; just amazing.

The whole study of Medieval and Renaissance music is a fascinating and rewarding one.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Christabel said:


> I remember studying this work at university (Musicology) decades ago and can't remember whether the matter was resolved as to whether it was accompanied by instrument/s or a capella at the time of performance.


We'll probably never know. As Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, Kirsten Yri and others have written, precisely because there are so many unknowns in terms of the transmission and performance of medieval music, recordings ultimately say more about the aesthetic and scholarly trends in contemporary medieval research than they do about the medieval period.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Here's some really bad thinking which would immediately make me fail a doctorate on the subject. 

There's a really ancient (pre-Machaut) tradition of singing each section of the Kyrie three times. That makes 3 x 3 = 9 sections. It's a bit of a challenge to make those nine verses interesting to hear, because it's repetitive. There were organs and bells lying around the church. It wouldn't be surprising if someone replaced one of each set of three with some instrumental music! 

The problem is that some parts of the church didn't like instruments in the liturgy, and they may have even policed this, or tried to police it, from head office in Rome. But things are really complicated. Reims Cathedral, where Machaut worked, was a fiercely independent organisation. They were perfectly capable of ignoring the pope's ideas if they thought best. Add to this that the cathedral was a big operation. They employed many people and were involved in some ambitious building and maintenance, all of which needed to be funded. And to fund it they needed to get people to make donations, they needed to get bums on seats at services. 

Hence making the mass musically entertaining was probably a logical thing to do. 

Mandryka Ph. D. (failed)


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

I really did not care much for the two recordings I've heard with instrumental accompaniment (Deller and Orlando Consort). The background drone makes it seem like there's an extra voice which messes up how I hear the polyphony.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Orlando Consort).


You know, I hadn't even noticed any instruments in that one!


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> The problem is that some parts of the church didn't like instruments in the liturgy, and they may have even policed this, or tried to police it, from head office in Rome. But things are really complicated. Reims Cathedral, where Machaut worked, was a fiercely independent organisation. They were perfectly capable of ignoring the pope's ideas if they thought best. Add to this that the cathedral was a big operation. They employed many people and were involved in some ambitious building and maintenance, all of which needed to be funded. And to fund it they needed to get people to make donations, they needed to get bums on seats at services.
> 
> Hence making the mass musically entertaining was probably a logical thing to do.
> 
> Mandryka Ph. D. (failed)


Wouldn't whatever "policing" was taking place be emanating from Avignon, and not Rome?


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## Guest (Apr 9, 2020)

Yes, this is correct. (Well roared, Lion.)


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> There's a really ancient (pre-Machaut) tradition of singing each section of the Kyrie three times. That makes 3 x 3 = 9 sections. It's a bit of a challenge to make those nine verses interesting to hear, because it's repetitive. There were organs and bells lying around the church. It wouldn't be surprising if someone replaced one of each set of three with some instrumental music!
> 
> Hence making the mass musically entertaining was probably a logical thing to do.


Performing the Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie with chant or organ or both alternatim and let the organ accompany some other parts of the mass particularly those written in motet style would seem natural but more for variety than entertainment considering the rather strict serious style of the mass.

But as far as we know mixed female-male choirs didn't exist in the church by then. And to transpose the mass up high to arrange it for mixed chorus is as well as certainly unfounded. Kandel therefore enters deep water with his recording. I can live with his tripling/doubling of the parts more easily.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> One of the things that has come up in recent performance of very old music like the Machaut is this. When you present it to a modern audience, because it's so old, it should sound _strange_. It should jolt and grate. I mean, it would just be wrong for the audience to feel comfortable about hearing music in 2020 which was written in 1320, because 700 years is so far away, it is alien, it is other.


So you don't think relatively informed performances like Parrott's or Clemencic's sound strange enough? Why make it more strange only for the sake of strangeness?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

premont said:


> So you don't think relatively informed performances like Parrott's or Clemencic's sound strange enough? Why make it more strange only for the sake of strangeness?


I think Parrott makes the mass sound like renaissance music. Clemencic less so. If you listen to Parrott's way of treating the Agnus Dei and Ite Missa Est, I know there are hoquets, but really, it sounds like Ockeghem. Part of it is to do with voice production, and the cross relations and maybe phrasing too. Clemencic sounds more disorientating.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> I think Parrott makes the mass sound like renaissance music. Clemencic less so. If you listen to Parrott's way of treating the Agnus Dei and Ite Missa Est, I know there are hoquets, but really, it sounds like Ockeghem. Part of it is to do with voice production, and the cross relations and maybe phrasing too. Clemencic sounds more disorientating.


In these ears both Parrott and Clemencic sound somewhat raw in the conception, the tone production approaching shouting a bit. Not as striking as Jantina Noorman of course, but still sticking significantly out from the overly civilized approaches of Bonnardot, Vellard, Kandel, Summerly and the one you posted with the vielle. Compared to these, which I think sound more or less like early renaissance music being too sweet and polished, I find Parrott and Clemencic more archaic sounding.Peres and Schmelzer does not sound particularly archaic in my opinion but rather on the contrary modernistic. But it all depends upon how we think the Machaut mass "ought" to sound, since we have no facts. As an aside I feel that Ockeghem's music often is performed in a too civilized and esthetically focused manner like late renaissance music.. So I've come to appreciate the Beauty Farm more, because they don't let their name dominate their approach.


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## caracalla (Feb 19, 2020)

premont said:


> But it all depends upon how we think the Machaut mass "ought" to sound, since we have no facts.


Ay, there's the rub. The evidence is (and is likely to remain) so flimsy, that if we're going to create a convincing simulacrum of 14thC sound, this is going to have to rely on art and not scholarship. The latter may assist insofar as it supplies a few ingredients we can put into the recipe, or advice on what to avoid, but in my view it is not essential to pay heed, and to insist otherwise becomes an arid box-ticking exercise. To date, those who have been careful to tick the boxes have not gone on to supply a very convincing end product, at least not to my ears.

But those are just my ears. My conception of the late Middle Ages and therefore of musical sound appropriate for it, may be (probably is) very different from yours, and neither may accord very closely with anyone else's. The performers are in the same boat. As yet, we are still very far away from any consensus, or even mainstream opinion, about how Machaut 'ought to sound'. With Renaissance (or at least late Renaissance), the situation is rather different. Peter Phillips is convinced that we will never know how that sounded either. But the TS and similar have long since managed to produce a sound that is not patently anachronistic, as some previous performance practice was, and to persuade many listeners that this is how the music ought to have sounded even if it didn't. So an 'illusion of authenticity' has been successfully created, at least for now.

Does this even matter? I would say yes and no. To me, Peres' Machaut does sound both archaic and convincing (ie, I can easily imagine that late mediaeval singing did sound something like this), and this is a powerful factor in the aesthetic charge it gives me. (Of course I also know it's just an illusion, and the key ingredients are fake, but a little double-think goes a long way). Otoh I also like listening to Bonnardot sometimes. This is Machaut wholly divorced from his time and place, listened to as pure music as one might listen to Byrd or Frescobaldi on the piano. A very different experience.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

premont said:


> .Peres and Schmelzer does not sound particularly archaic in my opinion but rather on the contrary modernistic.


Yes. From Cage to Wolff to Cardew and onwards, composers have tried to get musicians to produce a fresh, free, spontaneous creation of sound in performance.

From this point of view, I do see Schmelzer as a modernist. He encouraged his singers to use all their skills and experience to express the music and text freely.



premont said:


> In these ears both Parrott and Clemencic sound somewhat raw in the conception,. . . I find Parrott and Clemencic more archaic sounding..


I don't know. The link between rawness and oldness is not clear to me, especially in sacred music (sung _inside._)

My own feeling is that it would be interesting to explore how people chanted plainsong in c14 Reims, that vocality and sonority, and to apply it to Machaut's mass cycle. The mass cycle was made to sit in the context of chanted verses. Lately I've been listening to Hilliard -- the mass and the singing style that Potter, Covey Crump etc used on their conductus CDs.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I love the music of Machaut, I would like to collect and hear much more of it in due course. The interpretation of the _Messe de Nostre Dame_ posted by Mandryka earlier in this thread was in my opinion excellent.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

There's two recordings I'm curious about: Diabolus in Musica, and Ensemble Gilles Binchois. Any fans of either, here? I have the Summerly which I like well enough.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

flamencosketches said:


> There's two recordings I'm curious about: Diabolus in Musica, and Ensemble Gilles Binchois. Any fans of either, here? I have the Summerly which I like well enough.


There are, I think, three main differences between Vellard and Guerber. First, Vellard uses a countertenor, Guerber uses a couple of proper tenors. This, combined with the strong powerful voice of the bass Philippe Roche, gives the Diabolus performance a deep dark feel. Second, I find Vellard more lyrical and serene, Guerber more extrovert. Third, they have different approaches to _musica ficta_, the embellishment by means of accidentals, and this gives, I would suggest, a slightly exotic feel to the harmonies of Guerber compared with Vellard.

Apart from that, they're both one on a part, they both conceive Machaut's music as the ordinary inserted into a Gregorian mass.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Mandryka said:


> There are, I think, three main differences between Vellard and Guerber. First, Vellard uses a countertenor, Guerber uses a couple of proper tenors. This, combined with the strong powerful voice of the bass Philippe Roche, gives the Diabolus performance a deep dark feel. Second, I find Vellard more lyrical and serene, Guerber more extrovert. Third, they have different approaches to _musica ficta_, the embellishment by means of accidentals, and this gives, I would suggest, a slightly exotic feel to the harmonies of Guerber compared with Vellard.
> 
> Apart from that, they're both one on a part, they both conceive Machaut's music as the ordinary inserted into a Gregorian mass.


Thanks, Mandryka. They both can be had cheaply so I might get my hands on one (or both-I just got a whole lot of stimulus money from the government today ...) soon.

There's another one I'm curious about, the Hilliard Ensemble on Hyperion. Anyone heard it?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

flamencosketches said:


> Thanks, Mandryka. They both can be had cheaply so I might get my hands on one (or both-I just got a whole lot of stimulus money from the government today ...) soon.
> 
> There's another one I'm curious about, the Hilliard Ensemble on Hyperion. Anyone heard it?


They take the mass faster than either Vellard and Guerber. Countertenor, OVPP. Whatever you think of the way they treat the mass the recording is essential because of the lai.

If you buy the Vellard, be sure to get a release with the booklet, which has a very worthwhile essay by José Carlos Cabello.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Mandryka said:


> They take the mass faster than either Vellard and Guerber. Countertenor, OVPP. Whatever you think of the way they treat the mass the recording is essential because of the lai.
> 
> If you buy the Vellard, be sure to get a release with the booklet, which has a very worthwhile essay by José Carlos Cabello.


Hmm, I suspect the Brilliant 3CD release I've been looking at probably doesn't have much as far as a booklet. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't bring over the essay you mention. But it's such a good deal though.


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## caracalla (Feb 19, 2020)

If you don't get the booklet, you can find Cabello's article online by googling musicaantigua/messe-de-nostre-dame. It's in Spanish, but the English translation is readable enough.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

flamencosketches said:


> There's two recordings I'm curious about: Diabolus in Musica, and Ensemble Gilles Binchois. Any fans of either, here?


I like those two as well, but my favorite is *Andrew Parrott*. While I enjoy *Graindelavoix*, it is obviously a very personal and idiosyncratic interpretation, as is *Marcel Peres*. Not to say that they don't produce a pleasing effect. *Kandel* is entirely too indulgent in an opposite way from *Schmelzer*, and his organ sections bother me, not only because they are found in a manuscript approximately 100 years after Machaut, they always sound jarring to my ears and interrupt the piece in an unpleasant manner.

*Mary Berry's* recording is another excellent performance.

The versions that leave out the liturgical sections are not to my taste, and I strongly oppose the use of instruments. I have satisfied myself that the evidence does not support their use, but I no longer wish to debate the issue.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

SanAntone said:


> I like those two as well, but my favorite is *Andrew Parrott*. While I enjoy *Graindelavoix*, it is obviously a very personal and idiosyncratic interpretation, as is *Marcel Peres*. Not to say that they don't produce a pleasing effect. *Kandel* is entirely too indulgent in an opposite way from *Schmelzer*, and his organ sections bother me, not only because they are found in a manuscript approximately 100 years after Machaut, they always sound jarring to my ears and interrupt the piece in an unpleasant manner.
> 
> *Mary Berry's* recording is another excellent performance.
> 
> The versions that leave out the liturgical sections are not to my taste, and I strongly oppose the use of instruments. I have satisfied myself that the evidence does not support their use, but I no longer wish to debate the issue.


I do not know for sure - but suppose - that performance in low pitch is rather much scientifically substantiated, and I much prefer this to versions in high pitch with countertenor or women voices. In Early music I see countertenors as a poor replacement of boy altos. Countertenors also tend to produce a too sweet sound. I prefer OVPP and strictly a cappella singing. The liturgical parts however I think are best left out. I am not sufficiently religious to own the patience to listen to a whole mass, when it isn't but Machaut's music I want to hear. So my favorites are Parrott, Clemencic and Diabolus in Musica, and I have made specially burnt copies, which leave anything but Machaut's polyphony out.


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## CloisterFach (Dec 11, 2020)

My favorites are: 
1. Oxford Camerata (Summerly)
2. Graindelavoix (Schmelzer)
3. La Tempete (Bestion)

I prefer a cappella versions without ornamentation in a quick tempo, but since Oxford Camerata does that best in my opinion, my next-in-line favorites aught to be as different from that as possible. The logic works for me anyway...

*I NEED HELP PLEASE*: I'm writing an article and want to pay proper homage to Marcel Peres' work on the Messe, but don't have his CD and need to reference the liner notes. It's on-order, but will arrive too late to be of help in this.

*Does anyone have the Ensemble Organum (Marcel Peres) Messe de Nostre Dame CD? I need to reference the liner notes.*
Please PM me or email me at [email protected]. Thanks!


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## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

Interesting, I never expect this thread to survive more than 1-2 pages. I now only have Clemencic Consort version, the performance is very textbook excellence.


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