Overview

I am presented with a question. Was Guillaume de Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame a musical landmark? From even brief inspection of the evidence, the answer points toward this piece of music being very much a landmark. In many ways, this piece of music is both innovative and of a quality as high, if not higher than post-Renaissance music. Machaut was the first person to write a Mass setting for four voices, alone, where beforehand each part would be written by a separate person. Additionally, this is one of the greatest examples of the utilisation of Ars Nova as a system of musical notation, and provides an example of choral polyphony far in advance of any other music of the time, still considered one of the greatest and most important pieces of music ever written.

Resources

Messe de Nostre Dame - MACHAUT, Guillaume de - (Music Score) - Oxford Choral Music
http://www.hoasm.org/IID/Machaut.html
http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/machaut.html
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/personal/portfolio/224paper3.html
http://www.googlism.com/who_is/m/machaut/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_nova
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/personal/portfolio/224paper3.html