Burgundian School
The
Burgundian School is a term used to denote a group of composers active in the
15th century in what is now eastern
France,
Belgium, and the
Netherlands, centered on the court of the Dukes of
Burgundy. The main names associated with this school are
Guillaume Dufay,
Gilles Binchois, and
Antoine Busnois. The Burgundian School was the first phase of activity of the
Franco-Flemish School, the central musical practice of the
Renaissance in Europe.
In late
Medieval and early
Renaissance Europe, cultural centers tended to move from one place to another due to changing political stability and the presence of either the spiritual or temporal power, for instance the
Pope,
Anti-pope or the
Holy Roman Emperor. In the
14th century, the main centers of musical activity were northern France,
Avignon, and
Italy, as represented by
Guillaume de Machaut and the
ars nova, the
ars subtilior, and
Landini respectively; Avignon had a brief but important cultural flowering because it was the location of the Papacy during the
Western Schism. When France was ravaged by the
Hundred Years' War (
1337 –
1453), the cultural center migrated farther east, to towns in Burgundy and the
Low Countries, known then collectively as the
Netherlands.
During the reign of the
House of Valois, Burgundy was the most powerful and stable political division in western Europe, and added, a bit at a time,
Flanders,
Brabant,
Holland,
Luxembourg,
Alsace and
Lorraine. Especially during the reigns of
Philip the Good (
1419 –
1467) and
Charles the Bold (1467 –
1477), this entire area, loosely known as Burgundy, was a center of musical creativity. Most of the musical activity did not take place in what is modern-day Burgundy, which has its capital in
Dijon (even though the Dukes of Burgundy maintained an administrative center there). The main centers of music-making were
Brussels,
Bruges,
Lille, and
Arras, as well as smaller towns in that same general area.
Musicians from the region came to Burgundy to study and further their own careers as the reputation of the area spread. The Burgundian rulers were not merely patrons of the arts, but took an active part: Charles the Bold himself played the
harp, and composed
chansons and
motets (although none have survived with reliable attribution). The worldly dukes also encouraged the composition of secular music to a degree seen only rarely before in European music history, a characteristic which itself defines the Burgundian epoch as a Renaissance phenomenon.
This migration of musical culture east from Paris to Burgundy also corresponds with the conventional (and by no means universally accepted) division of music history into
Medieval and
Renaissance; while
Guillaume de Machaut is often considered to be one of the last Medieval composers, Dufay is often considered to be the first significant Renaissance composer.
Charles the Bold was killed in
1477 in the
Battle of Nancy, during one of his attempts to add territory to his empire. After his death, music continued to flourish in the cities and towns of Burgundy, but by the first decade of the
16th century the region was absorbed into the holdings of the
Spanish Habsburgs, who were also patrons of music.
The history of Burgundian music began with the organization of the chapel in 1384 by Philip the Bold; by the time of his death twenty years later, it rivaled the famous establishment at Avignon in splendor. Names associated with this early phase of Burgundian music include
Johannes Tapissier and
Nicolas Grenon, who carried the tradition across to the next phase of the chapel, when it was reorganized in
1415. Other early composers there were
Hugo and
Arnold de Lantins, both of whom Dufay later met in Italy.
Of all the names associated with the Burgundian School, the most famous was
Guillaume Dufay, who was probably the most famous composer in Europe in the 15th century. He wrote music in many of the forms which were current, music which was melodic, singable and memorable (more than half of his sacred music consists of simple harmonizations of
plainsong, for example). Contemporary with Dufay were composers such as
Gilles Binchois, who was at the Burgundian court between approximately
1430 and
1460, and
Hayne van Ghizeghem, a composer, singer and soldier who may have been killed in the last military campaign of Charles the Bold.
After the death of Dufay in
1474, the most prominent Burgundian musician was
Antoine Busnois, who was also a prolific composer of chansons, and who possibly wrote the famous
L'homme armé tune.
Burgundian composers favored secular forms, at least while they worked in Burgundian lands; much sacred music survives, especially from those composers who spent time in Italy, for example in the papal choir. The most prominent secular forms used by the Burgundians were the four
formes fixes (
rondeau,
ballade,
virelai, and
bergerette), all generically known as
chansons. Of the four, the rondeau was by far the most popular; at any rate more rondeaux have survived than any other form. Most of the rondeaux were in three voices, and in French, though there are a few in other languages. In most of the rondeaux, the uppermost voice (the "superius") was texted, and the other voices were most likely played by instruments. The bergerette was developed by the Burgundians themselves; it was like a virelai, but shorter, having only one stanza.
Most of the composers also wrote sacred music in Latin; this was to remain true for the next several generations. They wrote both
masses and
motets, as well as cycles of
Magnificats. During the period, the mass transformed from a group of individual sections written by different composers, often using a
head-motif technique, to unified cycles based on a
cantus firmus. Dufay, Binchois, Busnois,
Reginald Liebert and others all wrote cyclic masses. One of the favorite tunes used as a cantus firmus was the renowned
l'homme armé, which was set not only by the Burgundians but by composers of subsequent centuries; indeed it was commonest tune used as a basis for mass composition in all of music history.
During the period the motet transformed from the
isorhythmic model of the
14th century to the smoothly
polyphonic, sectional composition seen in the work of the later Burgundians such as Busnois. In the motets, as well as the masses and other sacred music, a common musical technique employed was
fauxbourdon, a harmonization of an existing chant in parallel 6-3 chords, occasionally ornamented to prevent monotony. Composition using fauxbourdon allowed sung text to be clearly understood, but yet avoided the plainness of simple chant.
Instrumental music was also cultivated at the Burgundian courts, often for dancing. A peculiarity of the Burgundian instrumental style is that the dukes preferred music for loud instruments (
trumpets,
tambourins,
shawms,
bagpipes) and more of this survives than for other current instruments such as the lute or the harp. In contemporary practice, the loud instruments would usually play from an elevated location, such as a balcony, while the other instruments would play closer to the dancers.
Instrumental forms included the
basse danse, or
bassadanza, which was a ceremonial dance of a rather dignified character, and relatively slow tempo. Typically it was in a duple meter subdivided into threes (in modern notation, 6/8), and often the dance would be immediately followed by a quick dance, the
tordion or
pas de Brabant.
The Burgundian School was the first generation of what is sometimes known as the
Netherlands School, several generations of composers spanning 150 years who composed in the
polyphonic style associated with the mainstream of Renaissance practice. Later generations, which were no longer specifically associated with either the court or the region Burgundy but were interlinked by adjacent geography and by common musical practice, included such names as
Johannes Ockeghem,
Jacob Obrecht,
Josquin des Prez,
Adrian Willaert and
Orlandus Lassus.
There are approximately 65 manuscript sources which contain music by Burgundian composers. The most prominent of these include:
*
Canonici Manuscript (containing music from around 1400 to 1440). This manuscript is at the
Bodleian Library in
Oxford, England; it is named after a previous owner, Matteo Luigi Canonici, an 18th century Venetian Jesuit. It has 380 compositions in all, including works by 60 composers. Both sacred and secular music are well-represented in this collection.
*
Laborde Chansonnier (containing music mainly composed during the reign of Charles the Bold, 1467–1477). It is named after the Marquis de Laborde, and is presently at the
Library of Congress in Washington, DC. It has 106 pieces of music in all.
*
Mellon Chansonnier (containing music from approximately 1440 to 1477). It is named after
Paul Mellon, who gave it to
Yale University; currently it is at the library there. It has 57 compositions, and includes some non-Burgundian music as well (for example, works by contemporary English and Italian composers)
*
Dijon Chansonnier (containing music from approximately 1470 to 1475). Some of the music is by composers not normally associated with the Burgundian school, such as Ockeghem,
Loyset Compère, and
Johannes Tinctoris. It is at the public library in Dijon, and contains 161 pieces of music in all.
*
El Escorial Chansonnier (containing music from about 1430 to 1445). It is in the Biblioteca del Monasterio,
El Escorial, V.III.24, and is commonly referred to as EscA. It contains a total of 62 compositions, only one of which is attributed (to
Gilles Binchois), although many of the rest have been assigned to Binchois, Dunstable, Dufay, and others, on stylistic grounds.
*
Johannes Tapissier (c.
1370–c.
1410)
*
Guillaume Dufay (?
1397–
1474)
*
Hugo de Lantins (fl. c.
1430)
*
Arnold de Lantins (fl. c.
1430)
*
Reginald Liebert (fl. c.
1425–
1435)
*
Gilles Binchois (c.
1400–
1460)
*
Johannes Brassart (c.
1400–
1455)
*
Hayne van Ghizeghem (c.
1445–c.
1480)
*
Pierre Fontaine (d. c.
1450)
*
Nicolas Grenon (c.
1380–
1456)
*
Gilles Joye (1424/1425â€"1483)
*
Robert Morton (c.
1430–c.
1479)
*
Antoine Busnois (c.
1430–
1492)
*
Guillaume le Rouge (fl.
1450–
1465)
*
Adrien Basin (fl.
1457–
1476)
*
Jacobus Vide (fl.
1405–
1433)
* Craig Wright, "Burgundy", in
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742
*
Gustave Reese,
Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0393095304
* Harold Gleason and Warren Becker,
Music in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Music Literature Outlines Series I). Bloomington, Indiana. Frangipani Press, 1986. ISBN 089917034X
* Walter H. Kemp,
Burgundian Court Song in the Time of Binchois: The Anonymous Chansons of El Escorial, MS V.III.24. Oxford, Clarendon Press. 1990.
