Quant je suis mis au retour

Guillaume de Machaut wrote the virelai for this simple love song sometime before 1349 (He died in 1377 and was born in 1300, so I guess this would have been a mid-life crisis piece.). [Verse 1] “When I return from seeing my lady, upon my soul, I haven’t a care in the world. Dear God, how I love her, with a pure and faithful love.” It is, in my opinion, a pinnacle work of the ars nova style of the late medieval period. It could be considered to be, again, in my opinion, the catalyst for The Renaissance period in music. Machaut was a poet as well as a composer. He wrote the poem and the music.