Work

Guillaume de Machaut

Guillaume de Machaut Composer

Se je souspir parfondement (virelai, a2)

Performances: 2
Tracks: 2
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Musicology:
  • Se je souspir parfondement (virelai, a2)
    Genre: Chanson
    Pr. Instrument: Chorus/Choir

Dame, mon cuer emportés is a polyphonic song by the fourteenth-century French composer and poet Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300-1377). It is an example of the fourteenth century formes fixed known as the virelai, which was a song of love descended from the chansons of the trouvères and troubadours. This particular virelai has two voices: an independent upper part called a cantus written against a tenor. On the evidence of its placement in dated texts, it is believed to date from the latter period of Machaut's ballade composition, between 1349 and 1363. Schrade catalogues it as Virelai No. 30.

His virelais (or, as he preferred to call them, chansons balladées) are, uncharacteristically for Machaut, mostly monophonic. This is thought to have been due to the comparatively late emergence of the virelai as a fixed forme, compared to the ballade and virelai. The word comes from the Old French virer, meaning 'to twist' (a reference to its dance origins) and the first polyphonic virelais date from the time of Adam De la Halle in the twelfth century.

Machaut is the most represented composer of the fourteenth century, from whom more than one hundred and forty works survive, including the monumental Messe de Notre Dame. While he was one of the most prolific composers of secular song, writing virelais, ballades, rondeaux, lais, a complainte and a chanson royale, his liturgical output consists of only the Messe.

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