A Mass for Machaut

Synopsis

In the Catholic Liturgical calendar, today is celebrated as the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. In the Middle Ages, when the veneration of Mary as Notre Dame – French for "Our Lady" – was at its peak, a "Lady Mass" would be sung on a day like this.

And it's quite likely that one of the earliest-known settings of the Latin mass, the "Notre Dame Mass" by Guillaume de Machaut, was performed as a Lady Mass at one particular chapel in the Cathedral of Reims for many years in the 14th century. Guillaume and his brother Jean were both canons at that Cathedral and had arranged an endowment for a mass in honor of Mary to be sung there every Saturday.

In our day, Guillaume de Machaut's Notre Dame Mass is his most famous work, but in his own time, the age of Chaucer, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, he was far better known as a secular poet of Courtly Love. Machaut had been a widely-travelled and extremely well-connected artist before returning to his native Reims at the end of his life. Before that, employment by various members of the royalty took him from Paris to Prague and on trips to Italy, Poland, and Lithuania.

It's ironic that Machaut is nowadays famous for his sacred music – this one Mass in particular – when the vast majority of his music was decidedly secular in tone.

Music Played in Today's Program

Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300 - 1377) Messe de Nostre Dame

On This Day

Births

• 1875 - English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, in London; His father was from Sierra Leone and his mother English; He composed a very successful trilogy of oratorios based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "Hiawatha": "The Song of Hiawatha" (1898), "The Death of Minnehaha" (1899) and "Hiawatha's Departure" (1900);

• 1890 - French composer Jacques Ibert, in Paris;

• 1896 - Russian inventor Lev Sergeivitch Termen (anglicized to Leon Theremin) in St. Petersburg (Julian date: August 3); He invented the theremin, an electronic instrument whose sound was used or imitated in a number of film scores (“Spellbound,” “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, etc.) and in the Beach Boys’ song “Good Vibrations”

• 1922 - German-born American composer and conductor Lukas Foss, in Berlin (presumed date; Foss says his birth year is not authenticated and he has no birth certificate);

Deaths

• 1728 - French composer and gamba virtuoso Marain Marais, age 72, in Paris;

• 1985 - American composer Richard Yardumian, age 68, in Bryn Athyn, Pa.;

Premieres

• 1865 - Liszt: oratorio, "St. Elizabeth," in Pest, Hungary;

• 1935 - Grofé: "Hollywood" Suite, at the Hollywood Bowl;

• 1986 - Penderecki: opera "The Black Mask," at the Salzburg Festival in Austria;

• 2000 - Saariaho: opera "L'amour de loin," at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, with a cast including Dawn Upshaw, Dwayne Croft, and Dagmar Peckova; and Kent Nagano conducting the Southwest German Radio Orchestra of Baden-Baden;

Others

• 1772 - Johannes Nepomuk Maelzel, German inventor credited with the creation of the metronome, is born in Regensburg; For a time he was the friend of Beethoven and collaborated with him on various projects;

• 1969 - The three-day Woodstock Music and Arts Fair begins in Bethel, fifty miles south of Woodstock, N.Y., attended by nearly half a million rock 'n' roll enthusiasts.