The polyphony of the surprising Lasse! Comment/Se j'aim is a fair bit less dense than in many of Machaut's motets. The parts are written in somewhat longer note values, although the top parts both occasionally have more animated passages, and the triplum is fairly active just in the effort to get the entire text sung. The result, of course, is a music more transparent to a present-day ear and consequently, the emotional rhetoric, very strong in this piece, is more effective. There is a sense of strain and unease in all the lines that immediately gives the piece a fairly tortured sound. There are some pretty large-span melodic leaps, especially in the motetus, across evocative intervals like sixths, and positively expressionist ones like sevenths. Machaut is partly using these daring touches to elucidate structure. Whereas the changes from one line of text to another might often, in other motets, be clarified with a rest, here he uses these unmistakable, almost garish intervals. To appreciate why it sounds this way, the surprising lyrics must be read. The text of the tenor is especially amazing. Understand that the tenor text in motets is usually only one line and often in Latin, here the narrator gets an entire short poem to further express her plight. Where else in any music has there been a line as frank as this: "Why does my husband beat me?/Alas I have done nothing wrong." Maybe in nineteenth century Italian opera, but it's certainly not the kind of forthrightness expected in non-dramatic works. Taken with the other two texts in mind, which are the narration of a woman who was forced to marry an abusive man she never loved, Lasse! Comment/Se j'aim is an unambiguous condemnation of arranged marriages. It is an institution that was doubtless the cause of great suffering in Machaut's time, especially among women, who were bought and sold like property irrespective of their desires. There's another kind of poignancy in the line where she says, in speaking of her cruel husband, "...however far my body may be from him/my heart is close to him/full of love and loyalty," the poignancy of loneliness. Through the clarified surface, the appropriate harmonic and melodic pungency, and the unexpected direction of Machaut's empathy, Lasse! Comment/Se j'aim becomes very fascinating indeed.

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