Guillaume de Machaut: Secretary, Poet, Musician. By Elizabeth Eva Leach.

Abstract

Few medieval artists lend themselves so well to a vie romancée as Guillaume de Machaut. He offered plentiful materials for it in his narrative poems, in which historical fact and erotic fiction seem inextricably mingled, especially in the later works, where his poetic persona treads increasingly into the foreground. Elizabeth Eva Leach’s impressive book presents an effort to separate fiction from fact and at the same time to reach a closer understanding of the life, themes, ethics, and aesthetics of this intriguing poet-composer. Her aim is to establish the study of Machaut’s music as an integral aspect of his oeuvre. The book is organically composed. An inventory of what remains of Machaut and an account of his ‘resurrection’ in modern scholarship and the concert hall are followed by thematic studies of creation, hope and love, adversity and death as they are treated in his narratives, lyrics, and musical settings. It closes with Machaut’s afterlife and slowly fading renown in the works of later poets and composers. A glossary has been added to enable the non-musicologist to follow the analyses of the music.