About Guillaume de Machaut

Guillaume de Machaut, sometimes spelt Machault (c.1300-1377), was an important mediaeval French poet and composer. Guilllaume de Machaut was "the last great poet who was also a composer," in the words of the scholar Daniel Leech-Wilkinson. Well into the fifteenthth century, Machaut's poetry was greatly admired and imitated by other poets including Geoffrey Chaucer. Machaut is also the most celebrated composer of the 14th century; he composed in a wide range of styles and forms and his output was enormous. He was the most famous and historically significant representative of the musical movement known as the ars nova. Machaut was especially influential in the development of the motet and the secular song (particularly the formes fixes, the lai, virelai, and ballade). Machaut wrote the Messe de Nostre Dame, the earliest complete setting of the Ordinary of the Mass attributable to a single composer, and influenced composers for centuries after his death.