Guillaume de Machaut was the first Western composer to make it relatively easy on scholars through compiling a coherent, authorized text for his entire musical output, subsequently copied as a whole. At least six manuscripts survive, which attest to this late career endeavor, and it transmits to posterity what Machaut believed was worth keeping of his legacy. The details are consistent from copy to copy as to Machaut's odd harmonic thinking, which contains frequent dissonances and tonal combinations so far out that many ...
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Guillaume de Machaut was the first Western composer to make it relatively easy on scholars through compiling a coherent, authorized text for his entire musical output, subsequently copied as a whole. At least six manuscripts survive, which attest to this late career endeavor, and it transmits to posterity what Machaut believed was worth keeping of his legacy. The details are consistent from copy to copy as to Machaut's odd harmonic thinking, which contains frequent dissonances and tonal combinations so far out that many twentieth century composers would never have thought of them; his fluid, multilayered approach to rhythm is easier to reconcile with the music of the fourteenth century and particularly the Codex Chantilly, a manuscript heavily influenced by the example of his music. Nevertheless, these stylistic devices have led to an avant-garde aspect in interpreting Machaut that makes him sound like arcane, alien outer space music rather than something that might belong in a fourteenth century...
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