CI COMMENCE LA MESSE DE NOSTRE DAME
“Here beginneth the Mass of Our Lady,” reads the heading following the motet section in one of Machaut’s most sumptuous personally supervised manuscripts. It, too, was a votive Mass, one that the composer himself endowed with a bequest, to serve as a memorial to “Guillaume and Jean de Machaux [sic], both brothers and canons of the church of Our Lady (l’eglise de Notre Dame) of Reims.” So reads the preface to an eighteenth-century copy of the composer’s cathedral epitaph, which went on to quote a provision of his will stating that he had left three hundred florins to ensure “that the prayer for the dead, on every Saturday, for their souls and for those of their friends, may be said by a priest about to celebrate faithfully, at the side altar, a Mass which is to be sung” (italics added). In fact, the will was honored (though not with the music originally provided) until the middle of the eighteenth century.
- Citation (MLA):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 9 Machaut and His Progeny." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 21 Jan. 2025. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-009011.xml>.
- Citation (APA):
- Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 9 Machaut and His Progeny. In Oxford University Press, Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 21 Jan. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-009011.xml
- Citation (Chicago):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 9 Machaut and His Progeny." In Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 21 Jan. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-009011.xml
