BERRY AND FOIX
But of course sobriquets like “decadent” imply judgment not only on the music, the musicians, and the notation they employed, but also on the audiences, which is to say the society that supported such a rarefied art. Ars subtilior composition flourished in two main centers. One was the south of France, the territory of old Aquitaine, whose traditions of trobar clus it was in a sense upholding. This territory included papal Avignon, as we know, as well as the duchy of Berry and the county of Foix at the foot of the Pyrenees, where Gaston III (known as Fébus, after Phoebus Apollo, the Olympian sun god), governor of Languedoc, maintained a court of legendary extravagance. The chronicler Jehan Froissart, one of Gaston’s protégés, endorsed his patron’s boast, made about 1380, that during the fifty years of his lifetime there had been more feats and marvels to relate than in the preceding 300 years of history. The ars subtilior is best understood, perhaps, as an expression of that culture of feats and marvels.
- 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. 27 Apr. 2025. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-009018.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 27 Apr. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-009018.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 27 Apr. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-009018.xml
