Grimace, Magister Grimache, Grymace

Abstract

A late fourteenth-century composer of five surviving attributed French-texted formes fixes songs: three balades, one virelai and one rondeau. Grimace's identity is unknown and it seems likely that his name, like that of other composers of the period (Solage, Zacar, Trebor, etc.), is a sobriquet. His songs' poetry is very similar to that of Machaut, and their music stylistically resembles those three and four-part works of Machaut which probably date from the 1360s and 70s. Grimace's four-part counterpoint works exactly as that of Machaut, with isolated moments of tenor-function in the contratenor which relates only to the triplum, usually when the contratenor is below the tenor.