Guillaume de Machaut.

Guillaume de Machaut. Messe de Nostre Dame [for] Mixed Voices. Edited by Lucy E. Gross. New York: C. F. Peters, c1998. Note, 1 p.; score, 36 p.; performance notes, p. i-x. Edition Peters No. 67574. $10.95.]

The Messe de Nostre Dame of Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377) is one of the most frequently performed and recorded works in the medieval repertory (for a list of recordings, see Lawrence Earp's Guillaume de Machaut: A Guide to Research, Garland Composer Resource Manuals, 36 [New York: Garland, 1995], 423-26). Although it belongs within an ongoing tradition of polyphonic compositions for the Mass Ordinary by fourteenth-century French composers, Machaut's Mass is the earliest surviving complete setting known to be by a single composer. Once associated by scholars with the coronation of Charles V of France in 1364, the Messe de Nostre Dame is now believed to have been composed early in the 1360s for the Saturday Mass for the Virgin, and to have been sung repeatedly at the oratory in the cathedral of Reims known as the Rouelle (see Anne W. Robertson, "The Mass of Guillaume de Machaut at the Cathedral of Reims," in Plainsong in the Age of Polyphony, ed. Thomas Forrest Kelly, Cambridge Studies in Performance Pr actice, 2 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992], 100-39). Both Machaut and his brother Jean were canons at the cathedral, and both contributed substantially to the endowment that supported the Saturday Marian Masses. After the death of Jean in 1372, the Mass became in effect a Requiem for the repose of his soul and later for that of his brother. It was included in all the manuscripts of Machaut's complete works except the early manuscript C, and also in a now-lost book along with Masses by two of his contemporaries (Earp, review of Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, Machaut's Mass: An Introduction [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990], in Journal of the American Musicological Society 46 [1993]: 296). The only other known source is a Paduan manuscript (Biblioteca Universitaria, 1475), which transmits the Ite missa est-Deo gracias in fragmentary form.

Earp's invaluable Guide to Research lists no fewer than nine complete editions of the Mass (p. 345), but for purposes of comparison, this review will consider only three--namely, Friedrich Ludwig and Heinrich Besseler (Musikalische Werke, vol. 4 [Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1954], 1-20); Leo Schrade (The Works of Guillaume de Machaut, Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, 3 [Monaco: L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1956], 37-64, reprinted as (Euvres completes [Monaco: L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1977], 1-28); and Daniel Leech-Wilkinson (Machaut's Mass: An Introduction [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990; paperback ed., 1992], with a new edition of the Mass on pp. 183-212-an enlargement of the score provided in the monograph published separately as La Messe de Nostre Dame, Oxford Choral Music [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990] with a one-page introduction summarizing the book's main points on accidentals, plicas, voices, tuning, pronunciation, and tempo in lieu of a critical apparatus).

Ludwig's edition, transcribed in 1903 from the manuscript known as Vg (copied ca. 1370), was completed in the 1930s by Heinrich Besseler and published after World War II. The extensive critical apparatus gives variants for manuscripts A (early 1370s) and G (later but closely related to A), but not for B (copied from Vg) and E (a late source). Note values are reduced to one quarter of the original, the scale followed in the other editions discussed here, but retention of the old C clefs may pose a hurdle to modern singers. Thanks to its detailed critical notes, however, and a layout that clearly displays the structure of isorhythmic movements, Ludwig's edition is still valuable for study.

Manuscript A, the main source for Schrade's edition, was prepared in the early 1370s, perhaps at Reims. An inscription heading the original index ("Vesci l'ordenance qua G. de Machau wet qu'il ait en son livre" [Here is the order that G. de Machaut wishes to have in his book]) suggests that it may even have been copied under Machaut's supervision. Schrade collated all the manuscripts of Machaut's complete works, but the critical notes, published separately in typescript in 1956 and not included in the later reprint, list only those variants affecting pitch and rhythm, not ligatures or accidentals. This edition employs treble and bass clefs and modern time signatures.

Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's monograph combines a new edition of the Mass with a useful summary of current research on the Mass's origins and function and an extensive analytical section that features a hypothetical--and controversial--reconstruction of Machaut's compositional procedures. Of particular interest to performers are sections in the introduction to the edition devoted to musica ficta, voice ranges and texting, and Pythagorean tuning. A phonetic transcription of the Latin text as it might have been pronounced by French singers of Machaut's time is also provided. Leech-Wilkinson offers the most complete collation of the sources to date, and his critical report is a mine of information for both scholars and performers. Variants in the alignment of text and music, ligatures, page layout, pitches and rhythms, plicas, and sharps and flats are listed in separate tables, with detailed commentary on alternative texting and musica ficta.

The newest edition of the Mass, prepared by Lucy E. Cross, is based on conclusions set forth in her dissertation, "Chromatic Alteration and Extrahexachordal Intervals in Fourteenth-Century Polyphonic Repertoires" (Columbia University, 1990). Unlike the editions discussed so far, this performing score places all accidentals within the staff, making no distinction between flats and sharps that appear in one or more of the manuscript sources and inflections the editor believes were routinely applied by singers trained in the solmisation system and its late medieval expansion, musica ficta.