As the name implies, isorhythm is the employment of a single rhythmic pattern repeated again and again by the tenor voice. Isorhythm lent coherence and unity to the motets of the age. Although he invented neither isorhythm nor the technique known as hocket, Guillaume de Machaut, who engaged in the religious (or perhaps more accurately, secularist) political, and intellectual movem

ents of the fourteenth century, and who may be regarded as the quintessential Ars Nova composer, incorporated these two techniques as well as elaborations on them (such as pan-isorhythm), extremely effectively in his compositions. It was through his work these innovations became standard practice for composers who followed Machaut. His music was also characterized by an unprecedented secularism which manifested itself in the form of a grand, magnificent, and complex style. These represented a divergence from the church in that religious authorities refused to sanction—indeed regarded vaguely heretical—this more elaborate style. Dazzling harmonies and singers who were happy to use these new works as virtuosic show pieces represented a specific shift in the focus of the religious service from the divine to the individual. Still, what was discouraged by the church was embraced by the people; the Ars Nova period inevitably and irreversibly changed the course of western music.

A prime example of Ars inNovation is Ha! Fortune, a motet composed by Machaut. Isorhythm is definitely present, as well as other defining elements of the tenor line, such as the color and talea. The repetition of the cantus firmus was called the color, and the talea was a rhythmic unit which repeats throughout the motet. The color and the talea were not necessarily linked, although the two often coincided at key points during the work. In Ha! Fortune,

Some topics in this essay:
Ars Nova, Fortunately Machaut’s, Miss Fortune, Ha Fortune, Machaut Isorhythm, Adjuvquoi Throughout, , color talea, ars nova, ha fortune, tenor line, fourteenth century,