Composed soon after the death of Guillaume de Machaut in 1377, Eustache Deschamps’s lament attests to the tremendous legacy already afforded the master at the end of his life. As the author of over 400 poems, 117 songs, 23 motets, 13 dits, and the first full Mass cycle, the Machaut celebrated by Deschamps assumes legendary proportions as the master of lovers, knights, and ladies; musicians, poets, clerics, and philosophers. Subsequent generations rarely wavered in their celebration of Machaut. In the realm of music, Machaut is universally recognized as the last of the great poet-composers, the greatest practitioner of the musical style known as ars nova (characterized principally by a freer attitude towards rhythm than had been the case previously), the master of polyphony, and the first composer of a complete Mass. In literature, he is regarded as no less than the pater familias of French poetry. From René d'Anjou who considered Machaut second only to Ovid to Daniel Poirion who recognized him as a precursor of Malherbe, Machaut’s legacy was to have masterfully united the auctor of classical literature and the vernacular author, music and poetry, the clerkly and the courtly world.