Work
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De toutes flours (a3)Genre: Chanson
Pr. Instrument: Chorus/Choir
De toutes flours is a polyphonic song composed by the fourteenth-century French composer and poet Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300-1377). It is an example of the genre known as the ballade, a polyphonic song of love. Commonly this genre would be written for two, three or four voices; De toutes flours, however, has a tenor and cantus, but is provided with both a contratenor or a triplum, either of which could be performed.
This work is believed to date from the middle part of Machaut's period of ballade composition between 1335 and 1345 in the latter years of his patronage by John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia. As all ballades, it is a refrain song, and has three stanzas. It is catalogued by Schrade as Ballade No. 31.
Machaut was the most famous and represented composer of the fourteenth century. Writing in the style known as Ars Nova ('New Art', to distinguish it from Ars Antiqua, or 'Old Art'), Machaut is largely responsible for the establishment of the polyphonic genres known as the ballade, rondeau and virelai. These secular forms had developed from the polyphonic love song genres of the trouvères in the previous century.
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