SOURCE: Laurie, I. S. “Deschamps and the Lyric as Natural Music.” Modern Language Review 59 (1964): 561-70.

In the essay below, Laurie investigates Deschamps's assertion in that poetry is an art form independent of music, finding the poet's views derived from his own poetry.

In his exegesis of the passage in the Art de Dictier in which Deschamps describes poetry as ‘musique naturele’ and music as ‘musique artificiele’, Dragonetti points out that Deschamps' belief in poetry as an art form independent of music marks a break not only with the whole of French lyric tradition, in which the chanson is the synthesis of word and music, but also with that transcendental view of music which medieval theoreticians borrow most commonly from Boethius.¹ Dragonetti's argument is based entirely on Deschamps' theoretical work and on the treatises of his predecessors. It is worth examining Deschamps' theory in order to determine whether it...