“With goodness, courage, beauty, and gentleness my lady is adorned; with manners, dress, sense and grace she is crowned.”  This is the sentiment Machaut expressed in the refrain of his virelai (chanson balladée) De bonté, de valour.[1]  The songs of Guillaume de Machaut were a major influence during the fourteenth century, and amour courtoise was a great influence upon him.

Machaut was born around 1300 in Champagne, perhaps in Rheims.  In 1323, Guillaume and his brother Jean became secretaries in the service of John the Blind of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia.  King John considered both Guillaume and Jean to be family, and after his intercessions to Pope John Paul XXII, the Pope offered a canonry to both Guillaume and Jean.  Blind King John preferred the French chivalry and court to his own, but he also enjoyed adventuring.  Guillaume and Jean traveled frequently with the King and gained a love of falconry and horseback riding.  They remained in King John’s service until 1346, when, during the battle of Crécy, the King tied his horse’s reins and those of twelve of his knights together and valiantly led them into battle with no hope of returning.  Shortly after the king’s death, Jean and Guillaume returned to their offices at the Cathedral of Rheims, the archepiscopal see.  It is unknown whether Guillaume was ordained, but he was tonsured.  He remained in close contact with his royal patrons, and even received Charles V at his home.  Guillaume continued in his position at Rheims Cathedral until his death in 1377.[2]

Machaut's France was perilous and frightening.  The Pope was in exile in Avignon because the Roman citizens refused to tolerate his subordination to the French king.  As global temperatures dropped, a miniature ice age developed which held Europe in its clutches until the eighteenth century.  In 1315, rain fell so long that crops rotted in the fields, and Europe was thrown into a famine.   English armies invaded France in 1337 and their siege continued until 1428, when France found her deliverance in Jeanne d’Arc.  In 1348 and 1349, the Great Mortality claimed a biblical third of the population, half of Paris, entire monasteries, and the noble ladies of Crécy Castle.  Flagellants abandoned all to roam the countryside, laying open their backs with barbed whips and loudly prophesying from the Book of Revelation, hoping their fervor and zeal would appease the God who had smitten them with war, plague, and famine. 

At the same time the life of the chivalry was being transformed.  The French monarchy grew greatly in strength and forced the French nobles to live in relative peace.  The lords were unable to pursue what had been their main activity: planning raids on other noble lords or defending their land and people from attack by the forces of other nobles.  These knights regretted the lack of fighting and developed the tournament to fill their idle days.  The first tournament was no more than necessary war practice, but eventually it evolved into an idealistic multiple-day gala event which glorified fighting.  Knights arrived in festive parades with their arms displayed on their surcoats, painted on their armor, draped over their horses, and carried before them on tall banner poles by their pages and squires.  Holy men preached against the tournament, proclaiming the damnation of anyone who died as a result of injuries received during the fighting.  Still, a knight fought to honor his lady, and she yearned to be the inspiration that would honor his love.  During his travels with Blind King John, Machaut certainly had exposure to chivalry and to amour courtoise and it is reflected in his writing.  [3]

"Amours pour amours!"  This was the cry of fourteenth century Amour Courtoise.  Love was not an intended feature of marriage.  However, if sinful adultery was discovered, it brought shame to the husband and to the wife.  Ironically, the immorality of romancing and loving another man’s wife signified the love was being pursued only for the sake of love.  Courtly love became an idealized melancholy: praising the graces of the one who cannot be had and wasting away for want of her.[4] 

Although Machaut’s best known work is the complete polyphonic Misse de Notre Dame, over one hundred and fifty of his secular songs exist.  There are four narrative poems that deal with courtly love.  Le Remedie du Fortune, in which a naïve young man learns about love, contains songs in every formes fixes.  Le Jugement de Roi de Behaigne, Machaut’s most popular and most influential poem, is an argument in which Blind King John must decide which lover has lost more: a widow or a cuckolded knight. He rules the knight has suffered more than the lady.  Le Jugement de Roi de Navarre is an argument with the poet during the plague about Le Jugement de Roi de Behaigne, which leads Machaut to admit the lady's suffering was greater than the knight's.  Interestingly, Machaut’s later work, Le Livre du Voir Dit, is a chronicle of his secret relationship and liaisons with Péronne, a young noblewoman who pursued the elderly poet with her own poems of love.[5]

The virelai form was developed and named in the early fourteenth century.  Machaut preferred the term chanson balladée (dance song).  While the virelai does have a set form, it is the most variable of the formes fixes.[6]  In its most basic form the virelai follows a pattern of Refrain, stanza, Refrain.  De bonté, de valour has three stanzas with a refrain:

A _OA_C  b _Ob_Ca _Oa_C  A _OA_C b _Ob_Ca _Oa_C  A _OA_C b _Ob_Ca _Oa_C  A _OA_C.

As outlined in Example 1, a stanza has three piedi (bba).  The first and second sections are sung to the b_O and b_C melodies.  The third section requires both the a_O and a_C melodies and is the same length as the refrain.

The first and second sections are half the size of the refrain.  The first four lines are of the refrain are the same length, yet they are asymmetrically divided between the A_O and the A_C sections (because the A_C section is shorter) which changes the melodic phrasing.  The open and closed sections can be seen in Example 1. 

The poetic structure of the virelai and its Italian counterpart, the ballata, significantly resemble some thirteenth century songs composed using rondeau, laude, and cantiga forms.  Due to this similarity, songs written in either the virelai or the ballata form often sound like an Ars Antiqua piece.  The melody of De bonté, de valour also sounds antique, further confusing the issue.  However, the composers of the Ars Nova were not so much concerned with the melodic impact of the piece but with the new rhythms.  Machaut left several contemporary manuscripts that list his works in a semi-chronological order.  With this understanding, scholars have placed De bonté, de valour (virelai 10) before 1349. [7]

If the date of 1349 is correct for this virelai, it is possible Machaut wrote it for Princess Bonne, the daughter of King John of Bavaria, who succumbed to the plague in 1349.  Although it could have been sung privately, De bonté, de valour was probably performed in a group setting with dancers and a soloist.  The dancers, moving in a circle, sang the refrain while the soloist sang the piedi.  It is believed that the Italian ballata and the English carole were performed similarly, however, there is a lack of information which can prove or disprove the actual dances which were performed with any of the song forms.[8]

Numerology was very important to the medieval scholar: anything could be numerated and interpreted.  Because medieval man found the number three's greatest significance in the symbolism of the Holy Trinity, triple subdivisions had long been accepted, and sacred music was written using triple subdivided rhythms to reflect that perfection.  Then, in the fourteenth century, Philippe de Vitry's treatise, Ars Nova, set forth new rules which greatly expanded the rhythmic options available to a composer.  Machaut was highly influenced by him.  The innovation of Ars Nova allowed four combinations of time (the subdivision of the breve) and more significantly, prolation (the divisions of the semibreve).  The new combinations of time are equivalent to the modern time signatures 9/8, 3/4, 6/8, and 2/4.[9]  De bonté, de valour is in imperfect time with perfect prolation.  The faithful short-long short-long pattern, which can be seen in Example 1, and the strong iambic rhythm of the poem indicate this song is rhythmically Mode II.

It is plausible that De bonté was written with specific tonal centers but without a specific modality.  Upon hearing it, it sounds a bit like G minor with a raised sixth and seventh.  However, the key signature is one flat and G minor would necessitate two flats.  While the scale used is similar to the Dorian mode, the melodic pattern does not behave in a manner that convinces the listener that Machaut meant to specify modality.  For example: If it were in Dorian in the key signature of one flat, the tonic would be G, with C as the subdominant and D as the dominant.  However, the observer will notice the absence of C as anything other than a passing note and will also notice the strong presence of A.  The frequent usage of F# as what feels to be a "leading tone" to G further confuses the situation.

It necessary to identify the important pitches in the piece as well as their relationship to one another. Every open phrase ends on an A while every closed phrase ends with a G.  With the exception of the opening phrase, this song progresses in a syllabic manner.  The progression is mainly stepwise.  In the refrain, all but one of the leaps are a third, and the leap of a fourth happens at the beginning of the phrase.  In the B section the melody is also stepwise with the exception of the second measure where there is a leap from D to G and back up to D again. It is quite possible that an instrumental drone could have been used in the performance of this piece: the best note to use with this melody would be D.

 Upon reading the lyrics, one becomes aware of the importance of courtly love in fourteenth century France. The melodic progression evokes feelings of longing and melancholy, which is perfect for the text and seems to have been created just for this poem: Machaut felt that music should be felt deeply. While it hardly sums Machaut's contribution to Amour Courtoise, there is a wonderful sentiment expressed in the last stanza of De bonté, de valor:

"And if it pleases you, gentle, honored lady, that I adore, may in me be doubled, without

 ever coming to an end, my pining; so I wish the pain and the amorous ardor that has entered within me to endure night and day, nor will you ever be loved less for that."[10]

Bibliography:

Richard H. Hoppin, Anthology of Medieval Music (New York:  W. W. Norton, 1978)

--------, Medieval Music (New York:  W. W. Norton, 1978)

Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror : The Calamitous 14th Century (New York:  Ballantine

Books, 1987)

Gilbertt Raeney, Guillaume de Machaut in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol.11

(London: Macmillan Publishers Limited, 1980)

Timothy McGee, Medieval and Renaissance Music.  (Southampton, Great Britain:  Camelot Press,

1985)