Somehow, in 770 posts on this blog, I never talked about Eustache Deschamps before. He was an extremely prolific poet who lived from 1346 until 1406/7. Born in northeast France, he studied under Guillaume de Machaut (about whom I have posted). Then, after studying law at Orleans University, he became a diplomatic messenger for King Charles V. He was granted other significant titles and duties during his life, including governor of the the commune Fisme.
Fisme suffered during the Hundred Years War between the English and French, and for this and other reasons Deschamps hated the English, using his poetry to express his feelings.
Deschamps wrote over 1100 ballades. To be fair, ballades were fairly short. The medieval ballade consisted of three eight-line stanzas with a repeating refrain. Most of them are satirical attacks on the English. He had praise for one Englishman though: he wrote one ballade praising Geoffrey Chaucer as a philosopher and poet. Chaucer, in turn, was inspired by Deschamp's one long poem, over 12,000 lines o the subject of women.
He also wrote a treatise on French poetry, in which he outlined the "rules" for different kinds of verse. He also shares his theory about music versus poetry. Music he considers "artificial" because anyone can learn it (it was a major course of study in universities), whereas poetry was "natural" because without being born with the talent for poetry, you would not be any good at it.
At least one line of his you might have heard. He wrote "Friends are relatives you make for yourself."
Next, I want to tell you a little about his university.
from Italian manuscript J. IV.115, an example of Ars Nova notation
Beginning in the early 1300s there was a change in musical style, an evolution from monophony (a single melody) to polyphony, in which two or more lines of melody intermingled. The result was to give music a richer, more expressive sound.
The Church didn't like it.
Pope John XXII rejected it (as he tried to reject elections of which he did not approve). The sacred monophonic chant of the Church was being mixed with secular tunes. Music was becoming "fancy" and "frivolous" in ways that did not suit the pope.
The new style caught on, however, and there was no turning back. Two books describing the new technique helped to spread the new ideas. They were Ars novæ musicæ [New technique of music] by Jean de Muris c. 1320, and Ars nova notandi [New technique of musical notation] by Philippe de Vitry in about 1322. Because of these titles, 20th century historians refer to this style and period of time in music (the 14th century) as the Ars Nova. This new style developed at the same time in France and Italy. In France, one of its greatest exemplars was the poet Guillaume de Machaut. A sample of his musical composition is found in this post.
Among the new forms of non-sacred music given to us by the Ars Nova are the Madrigal, usually a song of love for two voices, and the Ballad, a story with a non-religious theme which was meant to be sung in public. The music in the manuscript of the Roman de Fauvel is an example of Ars nova.
Did the greatest English poet of the 14th century and the greatest French poet of the 14th century meet, thanks to the Hundred Years War?
Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300-1377) was a classical composer and poet—in fact, one of the last poets who also composed music—and a part of the ars nova ["new technique"] movement which embraced polyphony. His name suggests that he was born in Machault, east of Rheims in France, but it is clear that he spent most of his life in Rheims. Unlike many non-royal figures of his age, his popularity has ensured that we possess a remarkable amount of biographical information about him.
As a young man, he was a secretary to the ing of Bohemia, John I. He was named a canon of Verdun, then Arras, then Rheims; by 1340 he had given up the other positions and was a canon of Rheims only. As a canon, attached to the cathedral in Rheims and living without private wealth, he could devote himself to composing poetry and music. In all, we have about 400 pieces in various forms.
He lost his first patron, King John of Bohemia, when John died at the Battle of Crécy in 1346 during the Hundred Years War. Machaut found support from John's daughter. When she died during the Black Death, he found support from her sons, Jean de Berry and CharlesV, Duke of Normandy.
In the next phase of the Hundred Years War, Geoffrey Chaucer (likely still a teenager at the time) was in the retinue of Prince Lionel as a valet. During the siege of Rheims in early 1360, Rheims rallied and captured the besiegers. Chaucer was taken prisoner. This would not have involved being thrown in dungeons and experiencing deprivation. The practice at the time was to capture as many high-ranking opponents as possible in order to gain money from ransoms. (Chaucer was ransomed for £16 in March.) The English would have likely experienced a mild form of "house arrest" which would have allowed them a certain amount of freedom. Chaucer would have had ample opportunity to visit Machaut.
Did he? We cannot be sure. Chaucer's poetry rarely offers attribution for his influences, but he was certainly intimately familiar with Machaut's work. Scholars have found numerous influences in Chaucer's writing. Chaucer scholar James I. Wimsatt has referred to "Guillaume de Machaut, who among fourteenth-century French poets exerted by far the most important influence on Chaucer."[link] Even long before he himself began writing, he was in a court that valued and supported the arts and poetry. Machaut was enormously popular in his own lifetime, and it seems inconceivable that Machaut would not have been sought out by several of the English who would have appreciated his reputation.
