MACHAUT or MACHAULT, GUILLAUME DE (c. 1300-1377), French poet and musician, was born in the village of Machault near Rethel in Champagne, and died at Reims in April 1377. Machaut tells us that he served for 3o years as secretary to the adventurous John of Luxembourg, king of Bohemia, while holding, at the same time, various ecclesiastical positions at Ver dun (1332), Arras (1333) and Reims. He followed John of Bohemia to Russia and Poland, and, though of peaceful tastes himself, saw 20 battles and ioo tourneys. When John was killed at Crecy in 1346 Machaut was received at the court of Normandy, and on the accession of John the Good to the throne of France (135o) he received an office which enabled him to devote himself thenceforth to music and poetry. Machaut wrote about 1348 in honour of Charles III., king of Navarre, a long poem much ad mired by contemporaries, Le Jugement du roi de Navarre. When Charles was thrown into prison by his father-in-law, King John, Machaut addressed him a Confort d'ami to console him for his enforced separation from his young wife, then aged 15. This was followed about 137o by a poem of 9,000 lines entitled La Prise d' Alexandrie, one of the last chronicles cast in this form. Its hero was Pierre de Lusignan, king of Cyprus. Machaut is best known for the strange book telling of the love affair of his old age with a young and noble lady long supposed to be Agnes of Navarre, sister of Charles the Bad; Paulin Paris in his edition of the Voir dit (Historie vraie) identified her as Perronne d'Armentieres, a noble lady of Champagne. In 1362, when Machaut must have been at least 62 years of age, he received a rondeau from Perronne, who was then 18, and wished to play Laura to his Petrarch. The romance ended with Perronne's marriage and Machaut's desire to remain her doux ami. Its subject and length are deterrent to modern readers. Machaut with Deschamps marks a distinct transi
tion. The trouveres had been impersonal. It is difficult to gather any details of their personal history from their work. Machaut and Deschamps wrote of their own affairs, and the next step in development was to be the self-analysis of Villon. Machaut was also a musician. He composed a number of motets, songs and bal lads, also a mass supposed to have been sung at the coronation of Charles V. This was translated into modern notation by Perne, who read a notice on it before the Institute of France in 1817.
E. Hoepffner, in editing Machaut's works, rightly says that they exercised a powerful and lasting influence on the literary develop ment of the 14th century. As a lyric poet, if he did not actually create the fixed forms, such as the ballade, chant-royal, virelai, rondeau and lay, which prevailed up to the 16th century, it was he who ensured their triumph. And he inaugurated the new lyrical art. It is true that he was profoundly influenced by the Roman de la Rose, but he introduced a personal, individual note hitherto lacking. Machaut was undoubtedly the master of a new school. Froissart and Deschamps, Christine de Pisan, Oton de Cranson, even Chaucer, all studied and imitated him. In the second half of the 15th century, he was forgotten, and was not rediscovered till the 18th century, by Lebeuf and the abbe Rive.
Machaut's Oeuvres choisies were edited by P. Tarbe (Reims and Paris, 1849). There are good modern editions of his longer poems in his Oeuvres (edit. E. Hoepffner, 3 vols., 1908, 1911, 1921) ; and of his Poisies lyriques (edit. V. Chichmaref, 19°9). See also F. G. Fetis, Biog. universelle des musiciens . . . (1862), and E. Travers, Instruments de musique au XIVe siecle d'apres Guillaume de Machaut (1882).