Its newness lies in the bringing together of features of different origins. The texts take on a formal, fixed structure that was already evident in the 1330s in the works of Jehan Acart de Hesdin and Jehan de le Mote. In language the ballade adopts the high style of grand chant. The interaction of the new types of voice-parts, conceived in relation to each other, is founded rhythmically on the „quatre prolacions‟ and tonally on the deliberate exploitation of the qualitative differences between perfect and imperfect intervals, as they would be described in the teaching of contrapunctus and here used in such a context for the first time. Until the late 14th century Machaut was alone in his use of these means for „subtle‟ text-setting in which every aspect of the text is expressed, from form to semantics, and in the latter case even as far as the meaning of individual words. In this regard only the monophonic songs of Jehannot de Lescurel offer any comparable examples of text-setting.