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John Dunstaple

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John Dunstaple (or Dunstable, c. 1390 – 24 December 1453) was an English composer whose music helped inaugurate the transition from the medieval to the Renaissance periods.[1] The central proponent of the Contenance angloise style (lit. 'English manner'), Dunstaple was the leading English composer of his time, and is often coupled with William Byrd and Henry Purcell as England's most important early music composers.[2] His surviving music is exclusively vocal, and frequently uses isorhythms, while pioneering the prominent use of harmonies with thirds and sixths. His style would have an immense influence on the subsequent music of continental Europe, inspiring composers such as Du Fay, Binchois, Ockeghem and Busnois.[2]

John Dunstaple had connections to St Albans Abbey, Hertfordshire.

Information on Dunstaple's life is largely non-existent or speculative,[3] with the only certain date of his activity being his death on Christmas Eve of 1453. Probably born in Dunstable, Bedfordshire during the late 14th-century, Dunstaple was associated with Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and Joan of Navarre, and through them, St Albans Abbey. Another important patron was John, Duke of Bedford, with whom Dunstaple may have travelled to France.

John. QUIT CHANGING MY GODDAAMNN EDITS.

Music

 
The opening line from Dunstaple's Quam pulchra es in modern notation

The musical output of medieval England was prodigious, yet almost all music manuscripts were destroyed during the English Reformation, particularly as a result of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536–1540.[4] As a result, most of Dunstaple's work has had to be recovered from continental sources (predominantly those from northern Italy and the southern Alps).

Because numerous copies of his works have been found in Italian and German manuscripts, his fame must have been widespread. Two problems face musicologists of the 15th century: first, determining which of the many surviving anonymous works were written by which composers and, second, unraveling conflicting attributions. This is made even more difficult for English composers such as Dunstaple: scribes in England frequently copied music without any ascription, rendering it immediately anonymous; and, while continental scribes were more assiduous in this regard, many works published in Dunstaple's name have other, potentially equally valid, attributions in different sources to other composers, including Gilles Binchois, John Forest and, Leonel Power.[citation needed]

Of the works attributed to him only about fifty survive, among which are two complete masses, three sets of connected mass sections, fourteen individual mass sections, twelve complete isorhythmic motets (including the famous one which combines the hymn Veni creator spiritus and the sequence Veni sancte spiritus, and the less well-known Albanus roseo rutilat mentioned above), as well as twenty-seven separate settings of various liturgical texts, including three Magnificats and seven settings of Marian antiphons, such as Alma redemptoris Mater and Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae. Dunstaple was one of the first to compose masses using a single melody as cantus firmus. A good example of this technique is his Missa Rex seculorum.

He is believed to have written secular music, but no songs in the vernacular can be attributed to him with any degree of certainty: although the French-texted rondeau Puisque m’amour is attributed to Dunstaple in two sources and there is no reason to doubt his authorship, the ballade remained the more favoured form for English secular song at this time and there is limited opportunity for comparison with the rest of his output. The popular melody "O rosa bella", once thought to be by Dunstaple, is now attributed to John Bedingham (or Bedyngham). Yet, because so much of the surviving 15th-century repertory of English carols is anonymous, and Dunstaple is known to have written many, most scholars consider it highly likely—for stylistic as well as statistical reasons—that some of the anonymous carols from this time are actually by Dunstaple.[5]

Influence

"They [[[Guillaume Du Fay|Du Fay]] and Binchois] took on the guise
of the English and follow Dunstable
and thereby a marvelous pleasingness
makes their music joyous and remarkable."[n 1]

Martin le Franc, Le Champion des Dames, before May 1488

Dunstaple's influence on the continent's musical vocabulary was enormous, particularly considering the relative paucity of his (attributable) works. He was recognized for possessing something never heard before in music of the Burgundian School: la contenance angloise ("the English countenance"), a term used by the poet Martin le Franc in his Le Champion des Dames. Le Franc added that the style influenced Dufay and Binchois—high praise indeed.

Writing a few decades later in about 1476, the Flemish composer and music theorist Tinctoris reaffirmed the powerful influence Dunstaple had, stressing the "new art" that Dunstaple had inspired. Tinctoris hailed Dunstaple as the fons et origo of the style, its "wellspring and origin."

The contenance angloise, while not defined by Martin le Franc, was probably a reference to Dunstaple's stylistic trait of using full triadic harmony, along with a liking for the interval of the third. Assuming that he had been on the continent with the Duke of Bedford, Dunstaple would have been introduced to French fauxbourdon; borrowing some of the sonorities, he created elegant harmonies in his own music using thirds and sixths. Taken together, these are seen as defining characteristics of early Renaissance music, and both Le Franc's and Tinctoris's comments suggest that many of these traits may have originated in England, taking root in the Burgundian School around the middle of the century.

Editions

  • Bukofzer, Manfred (1953). John Dunstable: Complete Works. London: Musica Britannica. ISBN 978-0-85249-408-0.
    • —— (1970). John Dunstable: Complete Works. Revised by Margaret Bent, Ian Bent and Brian Trowell. London: Musica Britannica.

Recordings

  • 1982 – John Dunstable – Motets, Hilliard Ensemble, dir. Paul Hillier EMI Reflexe 1467031, reissued with music of Leonel Power, on Veritas x2 50999 6 02493 2 6.
  • 1996 – Dunstaple: Sacred Works, Orlando Consort. Metronome METCD1009.
  • 2003 – Canticum Canticorum. In Praise of Love: The Song of Songs in the Renaissance. Capilla Flamenca. Eufoda 1359. Contains a recording of Quam pulchra es by John Dunstable
  • 2005 – John Dunstable – Sweet Harmony – Masses and Motets, recorded by Tonus Peregrinus for the Naxos label.
  • 2012 – O rosa bella Ave maris stella and Quam pulchra es by John Dunstaple have been recorded by the Lumina Vocal Ensemble

Notes

  1. ^ Translated from the original French:
    "Et ont prins de la contenance
    Angloise et ensuy Dunstable
    Pour quoy merveilleuse plaisance
    Rend leur chant joyeux et notable"[6]

References

  1. ^ Britannica 2021, § para. 1.
  2. ^ a b Nagley & Milsom 2011, § para. 3.
  3. ^ Bent 1981, p. 1.
  4. ^ Sources, May Hoffman, Latin Music in British Sources, c 1485 – c 1610, The British Academy, 1987, cited in MS, §IX, 19: Grove online[verification needed]
  5. ^ Fallows, David (2018). "13". Henry V and the Earliest English Carols: 1413–1440. Routledge.
  6. ^ Wathey 1986, p. 1.

Sources

Further reading

See Cook (2017) for an extensive bibliography

 
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