Guillaume de Machaut: Ma fin est mon commencement (c.1360)

Guillaume de Machaut composed this rondeau in the second half of his very long and productive musical career. It is a kind of puzzle canon or experimental counterpoint that predates Johann Sebastian Bach's "Art of Fugue" by nearly 4 centuries. Machaut cleverly interweaves a complex polyphonic exchange between two altos which are singing retrograde to one another. In other words, the notes of the second voice are exactly the same as the first but sung backwards. Even the text underlay in some of Machaut's manuscript editions of "Ma fin" were written backwards as Leonardo Da Vinci did with his scientific notes more than a century later. A third voice, the tenor, sings a palindromic passage in which the first and second half of each verse are reversals of one another.

In this soundtrack, instead of the customary ABAAABAB for a rondeau, I removed all the refrains and reduced the lyrics to an ABAAB structure to avoid excessive repetition. Using Music Studio 2 (iPhone app), I added instrumental sounds emulating a psaltery, lute and harp to double the voices in the final verse. The untexted MIDI file was compiled by Mr. N. Nakamura and uploaded to IMSLP.org. In this recording, I used, as much as possible, Middle French pronunciation as outlined by Timothy McGee in his book "Singing Early Music." For example, the final "t"s at the end of a line is not silent as in Modern French. Also, "trois" is "trweh" rather than "trwa."

French Text:

A. Ma fin est mon commencement
B. Et mon commencement ma fin.

A. Et teneure vraiement

A. Mes tiers chans trois fois seulement
B. Se retrograde et einse fin.

Translation:

A. My end is my beginning
B. And my beginning my end

A. And this holds truly,

A. My third singing three times only
B. Reverses itself and then ends.

Photos:

1. "Ma commencement" G. d. Machaut, Bibliothèque national de France MS. A, fonds fr. 1584, c1372; Machaut was clearly very confident of his impact on the future of music in France and in the rest of the world. Along with this elaborately and gorgeously illuminated Manuscript A (MS. A), he also commissioned two other volumes of his complete works (MS. E and MS. G), both richly inscribed with musical notes, poems and illuminations.
2. Nature introducing her children (Sens, Retorique and Musique), BNdF MS. A 1584
3. "Ma commencement" G. d. Machaut, MS. Bibliothèque national de France MS. E, fonds fr. 9221
4. Guillaume de Machaut as falconer, BNdF MS. A 1584
5. "Ma commencement" G. d. Machaut, Bibliothèque national de France MS. G, fonds fr. 22546
6. Guillaume de Machaut in a circle dance
7. Instruments of the 14th century (psaltery, lute, harp), Jean de Berry, c1380
8. Amours introducing his children (Dous Penser, Plaisance, and Esperance) to Machaut, BNdF MS. A 1584