CHAPTER 17CHAPTER 17

Music at the Court Music at the Court of Burgundyof Burgundy

Western Europe in the fifteenth Western Europe in the fifteenth centurycentury

The face of Europe, at least with respect to what constituted a country, looked considerably different from modern Europe.

BURGUNDIAN LANDSBURGUNDIAN LANDS• The dukes of Burgundy of the house of Valois were four powerful princes, cousins to the kings of France, who reigned in succession from 1364 until 1477.

• By 1477 they had carved out a small kingdom in all but name, one that included not only the duchy of Burgundy in eastern France but also almost all of the Low Countries. (modern Belgium, Luxemburg, and the Netherlands).

• The most important composers associated with their court were Guillaume Dufay and Gilles Binchois.

The Burgundian lands in 1477

BINCHOIS’S CHANSONSBINCHOIS’S CHANSONS

• Although Gilles Binchois (c1400-1460) wrote sacred Masses and motets, he excelled in the genre of the polyphonic French chanson– which at this time were still written in one of the three formes fixes

(ballade, rondeau, or virelai).

• Each of Binchois’s nearly sixty chansons are a small gem of lyricism.

• His ballade Dueil angoisseus (Anguished mourning), sets a melancholy poem by Christine de Pisan (c1364-c1430)– an important female poet attached to the court of Burgundy.

The beginning of Binchois’s The beginning of Binchois’s ballade ballade

Dueil angoisseusDueil angoisseus

• The musical interest in Binchois’s chansons is primarily in the lyrical, carefully-crafted upper voice.

• AAB form.

• Simpler rhythms used throughout.

BURGUNDIAN CADENCEBURGUNDIAN CADENCE

• Dufay, Binchois, and their colleagues cultivated a type of cadence in three-voice writing that allowed them to have a low bass line – yet also fill in the fifth degree of a final chord at a

cadence.

• This procedure is called the Burgundian cadence (octave-leap cadence)– in which the contratenor (bassus) line leaps an octave

at the end of important sections of the song.

A Burgundian cadence found at the end A Burgundian cadence found at the end of Binchois’s ballade Dueil angoisseusof Binchois’s ballade Dueil angoisseus

* Hints of dominant-tonic (V-I) in this cadence, which are first * Hints of dominant-tonic (V-I) in this cadence, which are first hints of functional harmony as we know it.hints of functional harmony as we know it.

GUILLAUME DUFAY’S GUILLAUME DUFAY’S LAMENTATIONLAMENTATION

• On 29 May 1453 the Christian world suffered a grievous loss when the Ottoman Turks defeated the Byzantine Christians and captured their capital, Constantinople (today Istanbul, Turkey).

• To commemorate the loss, Guillaume Dufay composed four lamentations, only one of which survives today.

• Such a lamentation was sung at a lavish banquet, called by contemporaries the Feast of the Pheasant, hosted by Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy– intended to rally support for a crusade against the so-called infidels. Dufay’s

Lamentatio sanctae Matris Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae (Lament for the

Holy Mother church of Constantinople).

• A section of Dufay’s Lamentatio, a motet-chanson– which is something of a hybrid of the two genres.

• The tenor voice sings a portion of a Gregorian chant

in Latin, much as in a Latin motet, while the cantus

sings a French text, as in the chanson.

THE ARMED MAN TUNETHE ARMED MAN TUNE• Guillaume Dufay and many other composers of the Renaissance

constructed polyphony Masses upon a spritely melody called L’Homme armé tune.

• No other melody has been borrowed as often for religious purposes.

• Most Armed Man Masses were written by Burgundian composers.

• The text, although in French, possess religious symbolism– for a calls to every good Christian, be he/she a crusader going off to ward

or the good Christian soldier fighting against the snares of the devil in the everyday battle of life.

The The Armed ManArmed Man tune has a tune has a ternary form ABAternary form ABA

A translation of the text of the A translation of the text of the Armed ManArmed Man tune tune

The armed man, the armed man, should be feared. A

Everywhere the cry has gone out,

Everyone should arm himself B

With a breastplate of iron.

The armed man, the armed man, should be feared. A

• Sometime during the late 1450s, Guillaume Dufay composed a four-voice polyphonic Mass using the Armed Man tune as the structural basis.

• He took the tune and placed it in the tenor, where the melody sounded forth in each and every movement.

• In so doing Dufay created a cantus firmus Mass - a cyclic Mass in which the five moments of the Ordinary are unified by menas of a single cantus firmus (a Latin adjective meaning “firm” or “well-established”).

The beginning of the The beginning of the KyrieKyrie of Dufay’s of Dufay’s Missa Missa L”Homme arméL”Homme armé (c1460) with the (c1460) with the Armed ManArmed Man

tune in the tenortune in the tenor