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Plus dure qu'un dyamant (virelai, a2)Genre: Chanson
Pr. Instrument: Chorus/Choir
Plus dure que dyamant is a polyphonic song for two voices 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. 28.
The virelai is thought to have descended, as all of the formes fixed of the fourteenth century, from a dance genre. The name comes from the Old French virer meaning 'to twist' or 'to turn'. By the fourteenth century, this had become a poetic and musical genre with an Old French text and of the structural form A b b a A. A particular characteristic of virelais is an unpredictability of line length, which is observable in this piece, with many lines being only three or four syllables in length. Most of Machaut's virelais are monophonic, though polyphonic virelais had existed since the time of Adam de la Halle, who wrote Fines amouretes ai, an early polyphonic virelai.
Musically set virealis continued to be composed throughout the fifteenth century, never reaching the popularity of the ballade or rondeau. It remained, however, a popular poetic form until the end of the century.
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