“Ma fin est mon commencement”. Guillaume de Machaut. Hilliard Ensemble

“Ma fin est mon commencement”. Guillaume de Machaut
Rondeaux
Guillaume de Machaut
(c. 1300 – April 1377)

Machaut’s rondeau Ma fin est mon commencement (Rondeau 14) is a truly iconic piece. This famous work shows his virtuosity in combining text and music to express an idea that is at once simple and complex. The speaking voice of the text is, strikingly, that of the rondeau itself, and it describes its own performance. Two voices share the same notated part. The first singer starts at its beginning, the other singer at its end, reading backwards; they meet in the middle. The third singer has a separate part, half as long, and, when arrived at its end, reads it backwards, or ‘retrogrades’. He does so three times, in the ‘b’ sections of the rondeau form (AbaAabAB). In the manuscripts the text of the rondeau is written upside down, beginning at the end. The voice names as described in the text are also reversed: the two upper voices are called ‘Teneure vraiement’ (‘Truly tenor’), and the tenor is called ‘Tiers chans’ (that is ‘triplum’, the higher third part). In reality the upper voices form a double cantus and the tiers chans is the true tenor. The rondeau features one of Machaut’s favourite images: the mirror. The reversed text and voice names might well symbolize a look in a mirror that reflects a world that is upside down. The text also conjures up a lofty metaphysical idea: when beginning and end coincide, time ceases to exist. It recalls God’s word in Revelation 22: 13 (and in other passages): ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.’ To acknowledge the unusual written form of this rondeau, the performance here presents the text as in the manuscript: one cantus sings the text in its syntactical order and the other sings it in retrograde.

Ma fin est mon commencement
Et mon commencement ma fin
Est teneüre vraiement
Ma fin est mon commencement.
Mes tiers chans trois fois seulement
Se retrograde et einsi fin.
Ma fin est mon commencement
Et mon commencement ma fin.

My end is my beginning
My end is my beginning
And my beginning my end.
This is truly my tenor [or, that which I hold on to],
My end is my beginning.
My third line three times only
Goes back on itself and so finishes.
My end is my beginning
And my beginning my end.

#Machaut
#Ma fin est mon commencement