Machaut described himself as small in stature, but intellectually he was a towering figure. Born in Rheims around 1300 and living to the age of 77, he dominated the 14th century as a composer and poet who was admired by Chaucer, valued by royalty, and cherished by the Church. He set to music more than 100 of his own love poems in the three main poetic forms of the day—the virelai, the ballade, and the rondeau. Machaut meticulously oversaw the copying of his complete works into luxuriously illustrated manuscripts, a process which was paid for by rich patrons and helped to ensure his legacy. He had a gift for catchy solo songs (“Douce Dame Jolie”) and reveled in rich, pungently dissonant harmony and complex textures in his 23 motets (especially “Inviolata Genitrix”). His masterpiece (and a pinnacle of medieval music) is the Messe de Nostre Dame (c.1360), the first complete mass setting by a single composer.