3. Here He in purity was baptized,
so that each person could be pure;
then he let himself be sold,
so that we who are in bondage would be set free.
Otherwise, we would be lost;
Hail to you, spear, cross, and thorn!
Woe to you, heathens, this enrages you!
4. Christians, Jews, and heathens
all claim that this land is their inheritance.
May God decide justly for us
For the sake of His three names.
All the world is fighting here;
We are desirous of the right;
It is just for Him to defend us.
From Peter J. Burkholder and Claude Palisca, The Norton Anthology of Western Music,
Vol. I: Ancient to Baroque. 7th ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014), pp. 48–49.
2. Not all musicians embraced the Ars nova at the beginning of the fourteenth century. One
vocal critic was Jacques de Liège, who complained about the music of Machaut and his Ars
nova contemporaries: “Wherein does this lasciviousness in singing so greatly please, this
excessive refinement, by which, as some think, the words are lost, the harmony of
consonances is diminished, the value of the notes is changed, . . . and measure is confused?”
How would you respond to de Liège’s criticism?
TEACHING CHALLENGES