1.
Paris
–
Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
2.
France
–
France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
3.
Burgundian Netherlands
–
The area comprised large parts of present-day Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as Luxembourg and parts of northern France. A fair share of these territories were inherited by the Burgundian dukes, together they initiated an era of Burgundian governance in the Low Countries. His son, the last Burgundian duke Charles the Bold, in 1473 annexed the Duchy of Guelders, the Valois era would last until 1477, when Duke Charles the Bold died at the Battle of Nancy leaving no male heir. The territorial Duchy of Burgundy reverted to the French crown according to Salic law, the Imperial fiefs passed to the Austrian House of Habsburg through Charles daughter Mary of Burgundy and her husband Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg, son of Emperor Frederick III. Maximilian however regarded the Burgundian Netherlands including Flanders and Artois as the domains of his wife and himself. The conflict culminated at the Battle of Guinegate in 1479, though Maximilian was victorious, he was only able to gain the County of Flanders according to the 1482 Treaty of Arras after his wife Mary had suddenly died, while France retained Artois. In her testament, Mary of Burgundy had bequested the Burgundian heritage to her and Maximilians son and his father, dissatisfied with the terms of the Arras agreement, continued to campaign the seized French territories. Attempts at enlarging personal control by the dukes resulted in revolts among the independent towns, Philip the Good extended his personal control to the southeast, bringing Brussels, Namur, and Liège under his control. He channeled the traditional independence of the cities through such mechanisms as the first Estates-General, the first Estates General of the Burgundian territories met in the City Hall of Bruges on 9 January 1464. Up to 1464, the Duke only maintained ties with each of the provincial States separately, convening an Estates General in which all provincial Estates were represented was part of Philip the Goods policy of centralisation. They were suppressed by Maximilians forces under the command of Duke Albert of Saxony at a battle at Heemskerk, early Netherlandish Painting, Its Origins and Character. Metropolitan Museum, Burgundian Netherlands, Court Life Metropolitan Museum, Burgundian Netherlands, Private Life
4.
Late Middle Ages
–
The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the period of European history generally comprising the 14th and 15th centuries. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the modern era. Around 1300, centuries of prosperity and growth in Europe came to a halt, a series of famines and plagues, including the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the Black Death, reduced the population to around half of what it was before the calamities. Along with depopulation came social unrest and endemic warfare, France and England experienced serious peasant uprisings, such as the Jacquerie and the Peasants Revolt, as well as over a century of intermittent conflict in the Hundred Years War. To add to the problems of the period, the unity of the Catholic Church was shattered by the Western Schism. Collectively these events are called the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages. Despite these crises, the 14th century was also a time of progress in the arts. Following a renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman texts that took root in the High Middle Ages, combined with this influx of classical ideas was the invention of printing, which facilitated dissemination of the printed word and democratized learning. These two things would lead to the Protestant Reformation. Toward the end of the period, the Age of Discovery began, the rise of the Ottoman Empire, culminating in the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, eroded the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire and cut off trading possibilities with the east. Europeans were forced to seek new trading routes, leading to the expedition of Columbus to the Americas in 1492 and their discoveries strengthened the economy and power of European nations. The changes brought about by these developments have led scholars to view this period as the end of the Middle Ages and beginning of modern history. However, the division is artificial, since ancient learning was never entirely absent from European society. As a result there was continuity between the ancient age and the modern age. Some historians, particularly in Italy, prefer not to speak of the Late Middle Ages at all, but rather see the period of the Middle Ages transitioning to the Renaissance. The term Late Middle Ages refers to one of the three periods of the Middle Ages, along with the Early Middle Ages and the High Middle Ages, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodization in his History of the Florentine People. Flavio Biondo used a framework in Decades of History from the Deterioration of the Roman Empire. Tripartite periodization became standard after the German historian Christoph Cellarius published Universal History Divided into an Ancient, Medieval, for 18th-century historians studying the 14th and 15th centuries, the central theme was the Renaissance, with its rediscovery of ancient learning and the emergence of an individual spirit
5.
Roman de Fauvel
–
The Roman de Fauvel is a 14th-century French allegorical verse romance of satirical bent, generally attributed to Gervais du Bus, a clerk at the French royal chancery. The original narrative of 3,280 octosyllabics is divided into two books, dated to 1310 and 1314 respectively, in 1316–7 Chaillou de Pesstain produced a greatly expanded version. The romance also gave birth to the English expression curry fauvel, the work is reminiscent of a similar tract in the 13th-century Roman de la Rose, though owes more to the animal fabliaux of Reynard the Fox. Some of these pieces are linked to Philippe de Vitry and the nascent musical style referred to as Ars Nova, the poem revolves around the central figure, an ambitious and foolish horse, called Fauvel. The horses name itself is rife with symbolism, Fauvel comes from the color of its coat, which is muddy beige and symbolic of Vanity. The name breaks down to fau-vel, or false veil, and is furthermore an acronym F-A-V-V-E-L taken from the letters of these vices, Flattery, Avarice, Vileness, Variability, Envy. The first book is a rebuke against the clergy and society, tainted by Sin, Fauvel though he is a horse no longer resides in a stable, but is set up in a grand house by the grace of Dame Fortune, the goddess of Fate. He changes his residence to suit his needs, and has a custom manger, in his garderobe he has those from the religious order stroking him to make sure no dung can remain on him. Church and secular leaders far and wide make pilgrimages to see him and these potentates condescend to brush and clean Fauvel from his tonsured head to tail. Fauvel travels to Macrocosmos and asks Dame Fortunes for her hand in marriage and she denies him, but in her stead she proposes he wed Lady Vainglory. Finally, Dame Fortune reveals that Fauvels role in the world is to birth to more iniquitous rulers like himself. In 1316–7 Chaillou de Pesstain augmented this text with additional 3000 verses spanning both books, the manuscript survives that contains Chaillous expanded version in his own hand, and this is the earliest copy of Fauvel to survive. The dozen or so other extant manuscripts are of the form. Chaillous deluxe manuscript is illustrated with 78 miniatures, and inserts 169 musical pieces, the 169 pieces all have lyrics,124 in Latin,45 in French. The genres cover the liturgical and devotional, sacred and profane, monophonic and polyphonic, chant, old, some of these pieces are thought to have been composed by Philippe de Vitry. Much attention has also paid to fr. 146s numerous polyphonic motets, some of which exhibit red notation of newer mensural notational innovations generally described under the umbrella of ars nova, although the text of the Roman de Fauvel is not particularly well known, the music has been frequently performed and recorded. The question of how the work would have been read or staged in the 14th century is the subject of academic debate
6.
Guillaume de Machaut
–
Guillaume de Machaut was a medieval French poet and composer. He is one of the earliest composers on whom significant biographical information is available, according to Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, Machaut was the last great poet who was also a composer. Well into the 15th century, Machauts poetry was admired and imitated by other poets. Machaut composed in a range of styles and forms. He is a part of the movement known as the ars nova. Machaut helped develop the motet and secular song forms, Machaut wrote the Messe de Nostre Dame, the earliest known complete setting of the Ordinary of the Mass attributable to a single composer. Guillaume de Machaut was born about 1300, and educated in the region around Reims and his surname most likely derives from the nearby town of Machault,30 km northeast of Reims in the Ardennes region. He was employed as secretary to John I, Count of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia from 1323 to 1346 and he often accompanied King John on his various trips, many of them military expeditions around Europe. He was named the canon of Verdun in 1330, Arras in 1332, by 1340, Machaut was living in Reims, having relinquished his other canonic posts at the request of Pope Benedict XII. Machaut survived the Black Death that devastated Europe, and spent his years living in Reims composing and supervising the creation of his complete-works manuscripts. His poem Le voir dit purports to recount a late love affair with a 19-year-old girl, Péronne dArmentières, when he died in 1377, other composers such as François Andrieu wrote elegies lamenting his death. That the majority of his lyrics are not set to music suggests that he wrote the text before setting some to music. In technical terms, Machaut was a master of elaborate rhyme schemes, Guillaume de Machauts narrative output is dominated by the dit. Machaut is also the author of a chronicle of the chivalric deeds of Peter I of Cyprus. His unusual self-reflective usage of himself as the narrator of his dits gleans some personal philosophical insights as well, at the end of his life, Machaut wrote a poetic treatise on his craft. This reflects on his conception of the organization of poetry into set genres and rhyme schemes, and this preoccupation with ordering his oeuvre is reflected in an index to MS A entitled Vesci lordonance que G. de Machaut veut quil ait en son livre. Machauts poetry had an effect on the works of Eustache Deschamps, Jean Froissart, Christine de Pizan, René dAnjou and Geoffrey Chaucer. The poem below, Puis quen oubli, is his 18th rondeau, Dit de lAlérion aka Dit des quatre oiseaux – A symbolic tale of love, the narrator raises four different birds, but each one flees him, one day the second bird comes back to him
7.
Polyphony
–
Within the context of the Western musical tradition, the term polyphony is usually used to refer to music of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Baroque forms such as fugue, which might be called polyphonic, are usually described instead as contrapuntal. In all cases the conception was probably what Margaret Bent calls dyadic counterpoint, with part being written generally against one other part. The term polyphony is also used more broadly, to describe any musical texture that is not monophonic. Such a perspective considers homophony as a sub-type of polyphony, traditional polyphony has a wide, if uneven, distribution among the peoples of the world. Most polyphonic regions of the world are in sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and it is believed that the origins of polyphony in traditional music vastly predate the emergence of polyphony in European professional music. Currently there are two approaches to the problem of the origins of vocal polyphony, the Cultural Model. Although the exact origins of polyphony in the Western church traditions are unknown,900, are usually considered the oldest extant written examples of polyphony. These treatises provided examples of two-voice note-against-note embellishments of chants using parallel octaves, fifths, rather than being fixed works, they indicated ways of improvising polyphony during performance. 1000, is the oldest extant example of notated polyphony for chant performance, European polyphony rose out of melismatic organum, the earliest harmonization of the chant. Twelfth-century composers, such as Léonin and Pérotin developed the organum that was introduced centuries earlier, the lyrics of love poems might be sung above sacred texts in the form of a trope, or the sacred text might be placed within a familiar secular melody. The oldest surviving piece of music is the English rota Sumer is icumen in. These musical innovations appeared in a context of societal change. After the first millennium, European monks decided to start translating the works of Greek philosophers into the vernacular, Western Europeans were aware of Plato, Socrates, and Hippocrates during the Middle Ages. However they had largely lost touch with the content of their surviving works because the use of Greek as a language was restricted to the lands of the Eastern Roman Empire. Once these ancient works started being translated thus becoming accessible, the philosophies had a impact on the mind of Western Europe. This sparked a number of innovations in medicine, science, art, European polyphony rose prior to, and during the period of the Western Schism. Avignon, the seat of the antipopes, was a center of secular music-making
