GUILLAUME DE MACHAUT Messe de Notre Dame Ensemble Organum, Marcel Pérès

As a ‘craftsman of the old and the new forge’, Guillaume de Machaut contributed to the tradition of his famous predecessors such as Adam de la Halle and Jehan Lescurel in laying the foundations for an aesthetic with an illustrious future, the Ars Nova. His Messe de Notre Dame, the first complete mass cycle whose composer is known, forms the quintessence of the renewal of sonorities and rhythms which marked the 14th century in France and Italy.