Musicology Commons^™

Review Of The Hilliard Ensemble, Guillaume De Machaut: Motets. Ecm Records, 2004, Vicki Stroeher

Music Faculty Research

The motets of Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377), though described by one scholar as "conservative and backward-looking" because of their heavy use of French texts, nonetheless provide a rich melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic palette for the extraordinary voices of the Hilliard Ensemble. The ensemble's recording of eighteen of the twenty-three known works in this genre (a twenty-fourth exists, but its attribution is spurious), is exemplary and should delight both the medieval scholar and the casual listener.