For the record, I don't share Morty's view, I just found it ironic that he could derive boredom from something so "flat" as Machaut, and I'm intrigued to know what he found so suicide-inducing.

You're right, though, he probably said that for the effect rather than for the lucid argumentation.

If youall are pleased by the foreign, 'new' quality of Machaut, I can also recommend the Byzantine chant and anonymous ancient Russian choral/vocal music that seems to have evolved therefrom. That is truly, profoundly bizarre. I believe the Tallis Scholars delved into it at some point. An authority on this music, Professor Marika Kuzma, works at my alma mater, University of California, Berkeley.

The presence of a work by Tavener on that disc would rule out my acquiring it though... and (I don't really know but) wouldn't it always be better to hear such music performed by Russians than by a group of singers schooled in the English choral tradition with probably not a native Russian speaker among them? Not that I can speak Russian myself, you understand, but it's fairly easy to tell whether singers are comfortable with the sounds of a particular language or not. Also, the Tallis Scholars make a beautiful sound, but I find their approach to intonation somewhat old-fashioned and colourless. This, on the other hand (heading back in the direction of Machaut) should not be missed:



being a low-price reissue of two of my favourite CDs of mediaeval music, performed (in case it's difficult to read!!!) by the Ensemble Gilles Binchois.

Well worth pursuing Machaut's Messe de Notre-Dame and likewise Hoquetus David.  "Hoquet" means "hiccup", and relates to an odd technique in which the performers "hiccup" shorter words into the middle of long ones,  by way of "decorating" the text with further textual accretions.

I'm entirely with you on Matteo da Perugia...   I seem to remember there is a nice piece of his called "Aquila altera" ("An eagle, from on high..."), although it might be Jacapo da Bologna or one of the others of that lot?

I think the lines aren't firmly drawn between instrumental and vocal music throughout that period, though   There is no rigid instrumentation designated for any of it,  with a few examples where the circumstances of some particular performance are known (for example, how the fiddlers performed variations on "Kalenda Maya" - which is a supposedly vocal work).

De Vitry's music is remarkable, but somehow he hasn't enjoyed the posthumous prestige accorded to Machaut. Landini is also overshadowed by Machaut...   I fear it's all to do with that "Ladybird Book Of The Great Composers" attitude of box-ticking "the greats"   And if I might be allowed a prejudice, I think part of it also stems from how much religious music composers produced... writers of sacred music have traditionally been more generously treated in text-books than secular composers.