Grimace (composer)

File:Grimace - Alarme, Alarme.png

A l’arme A l’arme by Grimace, verso 55 from the Chantilly Codex

Grimace (Template:Floruit; ; also Grymace, Grimache or Magister Grimache) was a French composer-poet in the style of late medieval music. Virtually nothing is known about Grimace's life other than speculative information based on the circumstances and content of his five surviving compositions of formes fixes; three ballades, a virelai and rondeau. His best known and most often performed work in modern-times is the virelai and proto-battaglia: A l’arme A l’arme.

He is thought to have been a younger contemporary of Guillaume de Machaut and based in southern France. Three of his works were included in the Chantilly Codex, which is an important source of music. However, along with P. des Molins, Jehan Vaillant and F. Andrieu, Grimace was one of the post-Machaut generation whose music shows few distinctly features, leading scholars to recognize Grimace's work as closer to the style of Machaut.

Identity and career

Almost nothing is known about Grimace's life other than the authorship of five works: three ballades, a virelai and rondeau, all of which are formes fixes.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Grimace's identity remains unknown and his mononymous name is likely a sobriquet, similar to other composers of his time such as Zacar, Trebor, and possibly also Solage.Template:Sfn His name is recorded in medieval manuscript sources with multiple variants, including Grimace, Grymace, Grimache and Magister Grimache.Template:Sfn Grimace is thought to be FrenchTemplate:Sfn or to have been active in the courts of southern France,Template:Sfn since two of his ballades, Des que buisson and Se Zephirus/Se Jupiter (a double ballade), and the virelai A l’arme A l’armeTemplate:Refn are included in the Chantilly Codex,Template:Sfn a 14th-century manuscript containing almost exclusively secular music by French composers.Template:Sfn Similarities to the music of Guillaume de Machaut (c. Template:Trim – 1377), the most significant European composer of the 14th century,Template:Sfn suggests they are contemporaries.Template:Sfn The strongest resemblance is found in Machaut's works from the 1360s and 70s,Template:Sfn furthering that Grimace was a younger contemporary of Machaut, who flourished in the mid-to-late 14th century.Template:Sfn Musicologist Gilbert Reaney speculated that Se Zephirus/Se Jupiter might have been written for Gaston III, Count of Foix and John I of Aragon.Template:Sfn

Music

Overview

Template:Template other The Chantilly Codex is a primary source of ars subtilior music; however, Grimace's works have been noted as lacking the complicated rhythms that characterize the style, without variations in the value of the shortest note and rarely using syncopated rhythms.Template:Sfn His poetry and music, especially his ballades, bear a closer resemblance to that of Machaut, an ars nova composer.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Despite their parallels, Reaney notes that Grimace's contributions to the Chantilly Codex are more advanced than those of Machaut.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn Nevertheless, with P. des Molins,Template:Sfn Jehan Vaillant, and F. Andrieu, Grimace was one of the "post-Machaut" generation whose pieces retain enough qualities to be separable from those of the rhythmically-complex composers such as Johannes Cuvelier and Johannes Susay.Template:Sfn Musicologist Template:Ill cites Grimace specifically as a transitional figure from the "Machaut-style" to the "Post-Machaut" style; both before .Template:Sfn This especially included the continuation of the ballade in the same general structure and style of Machaut.Template:Sfn

In both of Grimace's four part works, A l’arme A l’arme and Des que buisson, each upper part builds a contrapuntal relationship off the lowest part (tenor), while the tenor itself exchanges this role with the second lowest part (contratenor), usually when the latter goes below the tenor.Template:Sfn This happens often since the contratenor is usually lower, except at important section endings, similar to late works by Machaut such as Phyton (B39), although as B39 is in three parts, the lower contratenor does not, there, take on any contrapuntal foundation.Template:Sfn

Ballades

File:Grimace - Se Zephirus.png

Des que buisson and Se Zephirus/Se Jupiter, recto 53 from the Chantilly Codex

The two part ballade Dedens mon cuer survives, but is incomplete,Template:Sfn and shares an identical refrain text with Trebor's ballade Passerose de beaute.Template:Sfn Musicologist Yolanda Plumley notes that Dedens mon cuer also has textual similarities to other "Machaut-style" ballades: Egidius's Roses et lis ay veu en une fleur and the anonymous En mon cuer est un blanc cine pourtrait.Template:Sfn

En mon cuer est un blanc cine pourtrait Qu'Amour y a navre si doucement D'un dart d'amours que ma dame y a trait, En la playe est un rubins d'orient; En mon cuer, AnonymousTemplate:Sfn

Dedens mon cuer est pourtrait' un' ymage Qu'il n'est nulz hom qui peust ymaginer La grant beaute de son tresdoulz vysage Qu'Amours y a voulu configurer Dedens mon cuer, GrimaceTemplate:Sfn

One of two surviving four part works, the ballade Des que buisson is notable for its use of hocket in the triplum (third part) which Günther describes as something that "is striking and contributes to the complementary rhythm of the piece".Template:Sfn Since Des que buisson means to represent the coming of spring, musicologist Elizabeth Eva Leach explains the hocket rhythms, as well as falling thirds and repeated notes, as part of a birdsong motif.Template:Sfn

In Grimace's double ballade Se Zephirus/Se Jupiter, similarities to Machaut are especially apparent since Grimace adopts musical rhymes at the main cadences.Template:Sfn The work has the same rhymes as Machaut's double ballade Quant Theseus/Ne quier (B34), with which it also shares a refrain text.Template:Sfn Despite this, Leach notes that Quant Theseus/Ne quier is in four parts with two texted upper voices and an untexted contratenor, as opposed to the three-part Se Zephirus/Se Jupiter where only the tenor is untexted. Because of this, closer technical similarities can be drawn to the polytextual double ballade Je me merveil/J’ay pluseurs fois by Jacob Senleches, and Jehan Vaillant's double rondeau Dame, doucement/Doulz amis.Template:Sfn Both texts of Se Zephirus/Se Jupiter have an Ubi sunt theme, which is when, as Leach describes it, "hyperbolical comparisons are made between the lady and/or patron and a list of figures from the classical, biblical and/or Christian past".Template:Sfn Other works in the Chantilly Codex are representative of this, often signified by also beginning the text with "Se".Template:Sfn Se Zephirus/Se Jupiter is Grimace's second most frequently performed work.Template:Refn

Virelai

Template:Template other Grimace's most frequently performed and best known composition is his other four part work, the virelai A l’arme A l’arme,Template:SfnTemplate:Refn which musicologist Ursula Günther describes as "unique and extremely interesting",Template:Sfn and musicologist Willi Apel characterizes as anticipating the later battaglia form.Template:Sfn Musicologist Jeremy Yudkin expands on this, noting the many battle-cry and fanfare-like phrases representing warfare; something that was commonplace in 14th century France.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn The work is for four parts – two cantus parts, a contratenor, and a tenorTemplate:Sfn – and the cantus voices share text, while the contratenor and tenor parts imitate the upper voices despite being un-texted.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn At the same time, the contratenor and tenor have their own syncopation and rhythmic interplay with each other. Yudkin notes that the work's second section has a more "chordal texture", leading to a half cadence in the first ending.Template:Sfn A copy of the piece in the Template:Ill is missing the second cantus part, although musicologist Virginia Ervin Newes noted that this version is notable "since it has the added text in the tenor and contratenor at each point of imitation".Template:Sfn

Rondeau

Grimace's rondeau for three parts, Je voy ennui, survived in manuscript 222 C. 22 in the Bibliothèque municipale of Strasbourg until 1870/1, when it was destroyed during the Franco-Prussian war.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The music is now known only in a c. Template:Trim transcription of this source by musicologist Edmond de Coussemaker;Template:Sfn it is preserved in Brussels, Bibliothèque du Conservatoire Royal de Musique, MS 56286. Je voy ennui has less directional counterpoint than his other works, potentially due to errors in the transcription that are now uncheckable.Template:Sfn

Doubtful works

Apel proposed that two virelais – C’estoit ma douce and Rescoés: Horrible feu d’ardent desir/Rescoés: Le feu de mon loyal servant – are by Grimace based on stylistic similarities, the latter of which shows considerable textual and musical similarities to A l’arme A l’arme.Template:Sfn Their attribution remains doubtful.Template:Sfn

Works

List of compositions by GrimaceTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Title	No. of voices	Genre	Manuscript source: FoliosTemplate:Refn	Apel	Greene
Dedens mon cuer	2	Ballade	Bern, Burgerbibliothek. Sammlung Bongarsiana, A. 471, f 23v University of Pennsylvania, MS 11 (text only)	34	: 14
Des que buisson	4	Ballade	Chantilly Codex: 53r San Lorenzo: 146v [99v]	35	: 86
Se Zephirus/Se Jupiter	3	(Double) Ballade	Chantilly Codex: 53r	36	: 15
A l’arme/A l’arme/Tru truTemplate:Refn	4	Virelai	Chantilly Codex: 55v	37	: 91 : 22
	3		Template:Ill: 69v	–	–
Je voy ennui	3	Rondeau	[F-Sm 222 C. 22]: 25rTemplate:Refn	–	–
			MS 56286: 25r	38	: 5
No other works by Grimace survive

Doubtful attributionsTemplate:Sfn

Title	No. of voices	Genre	Manuscript source: FoliosTemplate:Refn	Apel	Greene
C’estoit ma douce nouriture	3	Virelai	Template:Ill: 64r San Lorenzo: 133v-134r [101v-102r] Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 29775 vol. 8	186	: 22
Horrible feu d’ardent desir/Rescoés: Le feu de mon loyal servant	3	Virelai	Template:Ill: 58r	222	: 57

Editions

Grimace's works are included in the following collections:

References

Sources

Books

Journals and articles

• Template:Grove Music subscription
• Template:Grove Music subscription

Online

Blog by subject-matter expert

Further reading

• Reprinted in Wilkins, Nigel E. (2011). "Words and Music in Medieval Europe". Farnham: Ashgate. 8: 40–84.

External links

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