Ars nova

Ars nova is the French polyphonic style of the fourteenth century, named for the treatise Ars nova attributed to *Philippe de Vitry*. Its composers, above all *Guillaume de Machaut*, exploited new rhythmic notation that permitted duple metre, syncopation and isorhythm — the repetition of a rhythmic pattern independent of melody — across motets, mass movements and the fixed poetic forms of ballade, rondeau and virelai. Against the smoother ars antiqua it set greater rhythmic freedom, dissonance and individual authorship, making Machaut the first composer whose complete works survive under his own supervision.