Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377) was the greatest French composer of his century, the creator of the first complete polyphonic Mass setting, and a renowned poet.

Guillaume de Machaut was born in the village of Machault in Champagne, near Reims. He became a cleric, and in 1323 he joined the household of King John of Bohemia as a secretary. John was the son of one German emperor and the father of another; his ancestral castle was Luxembourg. He was also the brother-in-law of one French king and later became the father-in-law of another, and his closest associations were with the French court. One of the most traveled noblemen of Europe and involved in numerous military campaigns, John took his secretary with him to Bohemia, Prussia, Poland, Lithuania, and Italy.

Later John settled Machaut at Reims with a canonicate. There Machaut lived from about 1340 on, quietly and peacefully, except for...