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, 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.