On Sunday, Jun 1 at 3 p.m., Early Music Michigan will present a concert of medieval music at the First Congregational Church in downtown Kalamazoo. The program is titled “Douce Jolie: Christine de Pizan and Guillaume de Machaut in Dialogue.”
“All the music you will hear will be Machaut,” says Luke Conklin, Early Music Michigan’s artistic and executive director. “And that is not a hardship because Machaut wrote so much music… you could go to concerts for weeks and you would still be hearing different performances of Machaut.”
Known as the “last troubadour,” Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377) is also credited as the first known composer to create a complete polyphonic setting of the Catholic Mass. “He’s the first person that we know—the biographical information, his name is signed on the paper—for the mass,” says Conklin. “That opens the gates to 700 years of mass composition.”
Christine de Pizan, an Italian-born writer at the French court, was also a celebrated writer in 14th century France. “She was responding in large part to centuries of courtly love and lyrics… and says, ‘Yeah, that’s not really how it is,’” Conklin explains. “She was able to say, ‘Women aren’t treated that well, and this is what we have to say.’”
De Pizan’s poetry and prose will provide a counterpoint to Machaut’s songs of courtly love. “We’ll have members of the group… reading some of those responses to Machaut,” Conklin says. “In that way, this concert will have a dialogue.” Highlights include Machaut’s setting of the mass, and a selection of his secular love songs.
More details are available at earlymusicmichigan.org.
