Mors sui se je ne vous voy is a polyphonic song by the fourteenth-century French composer Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300-1377). It is an example of the genre known as the virelai, one of the formes fixed of the fourteenth century (the others were the ballade and the rondeau). Schrade catalogues this work as Virelai No. 26.

This work is one of the rare polyphonic virelais of Machaut, of which there are eight in a total corpus of thirty-three. Polyphonic setting in the fourteenth century meant writing two, three or (rarely) four parts. In a two-part setting, as this one, the cantus would be set against a tenor (additional parts meant the addition of a triplum working against the cantus or contratenor working against the tenor). The tenor was generally rhythmically and intervalically simpler than the cantus, which would be set using the rules of fourteenth-century counterpoint. The unison, fourth, fifth and octave were considered consonants and the third and sixth, dissonances. Extreme dissonance (such as the tritone) were avoided by raising or lowering one of the offending notes by a semitone in a procedure commonly, though incorrectly called musica ficta. Sometimes, however, such an extreme dissonance was required by the composer, who added an accidental, which may be heard over the first word in this piece.



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