We are moving through history very rapidly. After 1300 the technical development of polyphony reached new heights of sophistication. Composers and music theorists of the time began to speak of an ars nova, a “new art” or “new technique.” The motet continued to develop as an important genre, incorporating ars nova ingredients; but the organum of the Notre Dame composers, now many years old, was regarded as “ancient art,” ars antique.

Some historians have compared the fourteenth century with the twentieth, for it was a time of the breakup of traditions — an age of anxiety, corruption, and worse. Bubonic plague, the “Black Death,” carried away an estimated 75 million people, at a time when the church had broken apart and two rival popes claimed the allegiance of European Christendom.

Polyphonic music grew increasingly intricate and even convoluted, as did the painting, architecture, and poetry of the time. Motets reflected such intricacy in a structural technique they employed called isorhythm. Here rhythmic patterns many notes long were repeated over and over — isorhythm means equal rhythm — but with different pitches each time. This went along with other schematic and numerical procedures, meant for the mind rather than the ear. Mathematics was also making great strides in this period.

The leading composers, Philippe de Vitry (1291–1361) and Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–1377), were both churchmen — Vitry ended his life as a bishop — but they were political churchmen serving the courts of France and Luxembourg. Machaut was also the greatest French poet of his time, admired (and imitated) by his younger English contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer.