John Haines, Music in Films on the Middle Ages: Authenticity vs. FantasyNew York and London. Routledge [xvii, 229pp. ISBN: 9780415824125. $160.00 (hardback)]. Routledge Research in Music. Figures, tables, preface, endnotes, bibliography, filmography, index.

On first glance, Machaut's Tans doucement/Eins que ma dame/Ruina (M13) is a typical motet with few musical or textual anomalies. Perhaps this is why, with the exception of a brief article by Alice V. Clark, little extensive, individual study of M13 has been conducted. This article examines the musico-poetic cues for Fortune found in M13’s many forms of reversal, duality and upset order. The discovery of a new acrostic which references the Roman de Fauvel, whose interpolated motet Super cathedram/Presidentes in thronis/Ruina (F4) is the source of M13’s tenor, further supports a Fortune-based reading of this motet. M13 may therefore be included among the Fortune-prominent motets proposed by Anna Zayaruznaya and Jacques Boogaart (M12, M14 and M15). Understanding that Machaut intentionally ordered his motets, M13 fills a sequential gap, suggesting that M12–15 may serve as a meaningfully ordered group of Fortune-based motets. The acrostic's Fauvel reference also provides additional connections between M13 and F4, offering insight into ways Machaut may have responded to and cleverly cited his sources.