Last week Andrew texted me this amazing parody of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” It’s a “bardcore” cover by Hildegard von Blingin’ full of medieval and Renaissance references.

There are probably a couple of dozen allusions that I don’t know or know little about… so it should be fun to look them up!

Let’s start with the lyrics to Verse 1.

Eleanor of Aquitaine
Charles the 6th hath gone insane
Reconquista
Geoffrey Chaucer, Michelangelo
Marco Polo, Magna Carta
Christian Schism, Siege of Acre
Byzantine iconoclasm
Guillaume de Machaut

The subject I know least about in the list is Guillaume de Machaut, so here’s the 101 courtesy of Wikipedia.

• Machaut was a French composer who lived from about 1300 until 1377
• One of the earliest European composers for whom we have a lot of biographical information and surviving music
• Considered the leading composer of 14th century
• Poet-composer in the troubadour tradition
• Central figure of ars nova style of late medieval music
• Secretary to John I (Count of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia) and later worked for other aristocrats
• Canon in the church
• Wrote both church music and secular songs
• Wrote the earliest complete setting of the Ordinary of the Mass attributable to a single composer
• His secular music deals with courtly love in five genres (lai, virelai, motet, ballade, rondeau)
• He also wrote a great deal of poetry not set to music
• Influenced Geoffrey Chaucer (1340s-1400) and it’s possible though unlikely that they met each other
• At the end of his life he wrote a poetic treatise and was preoccupied with ordering his body of work

I can see that this song is going to be very education!