Mahieu de Gant was a Flemish

County of Flanders

The County of Flanders was one of the territories constituting the Low Countries. The county existed from 862 to 1795. It was one of the original secular fiefs of France and for centuries was one of the most affluent regions in Europe....

 trouvère

Trouvère

Trouvère , sometimes spelled trouveur , is the Northern French form of the word trobador . It refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France...

 from Ghent

Ghent

Ghent is a city and a municipality located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital and biggest city of the East Flanders province. The city started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Lys and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of...

 associated with the so-called "school of Arras

Arras

Arras is the capital of the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. The historic centre of the Artois region, its local speech is characterized as a Picard dialect...

". He has been conflated with Mahieu le Juif

Mahieu le Juif

Mahieu le Juif was an Old French trouvère. His name means "Matthew the Jew" and, if his own songs are to be believed, he was a convert from Judaism to Christianity. Only two of his songs survive, one with a melody...

, but the same manuscript that contains both their works clearly distinguishes them. His career can only be dated because of those with whom he composed jeux partis, which includes Robert de la Piere

Robert de la Piere

Robert de la Piere was a trouvère of the so-called "school" of Arras. In his time Robert's bourgeois family was prominent in Arras, though the earliest known member is only recorded in 1212. Robert served as a magistrate in 1255, as attested by one surviving document in the municipal archives...

, who died in 1258. All of Mahieu's melodies are in bar form

Bar form

Bar form is a musical form of the pattern AAB.-Original Use:The term comes from the rigorous terminology of the Meistersinger guilds of the 15th to 18th century who used it to describe their songs and the songs of the predecessors, the minnesingers of the 12th to 14th century...

.

List of songs

Chansons

• Con plus aim et mains ai joie
• De faire chançon envoisie
• Je serf Amours a mon pooir

Jeux partis

• Mahieu de Gant, respondés a ce (with Robert de la Piere
  Robert de la Piere
  Robert de la Piere was a trouvère of the so-called "school" of Arras. In his time Robert's bourgeois family was prominent in Arras, though the earliest known member is only recorded in 1212. Robert served as a magistrate in 1255, as attested by one surviving document in the municipal archives...
  
  )
• Mahieu de Gant respondés a moi (with Robert de la Piere
  Robert de la Piere
  Robert de la Piere was a trouvère of the so-called "school" of Arras. In his time Robert's bourgeois family was prominent in Arras, though the earliest known member is only recorded in 1212. Robert served as a magistrate in 1255, as attested by one surviving document in the municipal archives...
  
  ; no music)
• Mahieu, je vous part, compains (with Colart le Changeur)
• Mahieu, jugiez, se une dame amoie (with Henry Amion)