II
With the decline of the old French school the musical leadership of Europe passed into the hands of the Early Netherlanders, called by some historians the Gallo-Belgian School, which flourished, roughly, from the middle of the fourteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century.
It will be remembered that the fourteenth century was an epoch of great prosperity in the Netherlands. The ancient nobility had lost power, while the towns, with their astute and far-seeing traders, had acquired extraordinary strength. Earlier many serfs had been enfranchised, and thus a large body of sturdy workers was liberated into the independent trades and soon became wealthier and more powerful than the nobles. The trade guilds and burghers were uncompromising in resisting the encroachments both of the feudal lords and of the Church, and were, therefore, enabled to turn their energies toward commerce and agriculture, unchecked by the influences of a corrupt government. Great factories flourished, vessels of Dutch merchants plied their trade in nearly every sea, population, wealth, and intelligence increased. The ancient towns, Bruges, Louvain, Antwerp, Ghent, Ypres, still bear testimony to these days of prosperity in their magnificent examples, not of ecclesiastical architecture, as in Italy, but of splendid structures for municipal and domestic use. It was among these prosperous and music-loving people that the art of contrapuntal writing was nourished. They did not invent or create polyphony, as has long been believed; but they found pleasure in the fact that the principles of music could be reduced to laws and rules, and the more intricate the rules, the more the true Netherlanders delighted in them. In fact, it was this very tendency that smothered polyphony itself, in course of time; but not before a vast amount of systematized knowledge had been preserved for their successors.
The service of the Pope’s chapel up to the time of its return to Rome from Avignon in 1377 was sung in faux-bourdon, or in the still older method of extemporaneous descant. Ecclesiastical records show that, after the return to Rome, several Belgian musicians were among the singers in the papal choir. These brought with them, along with other music, the first masses written in counterpoint that had ever been seen there. Among the Belgians in Rome, in the early fifteenth century, was a tenor singer named William Dufay, born probably in Chimay, in Hainault, about 1400. There has been much misapprehension concerning Dufay, owing to the fact that Baini, an Italian historian (1775-1844), gave, erroneously, the probable date of his death as 1432. Recent researches, however, especially those of Sir John Stainer, have thrown much light on the life and work of Dufay, and enabled historians to understand facts which hitherto had seemed irreconcilable.
According to this recent authority, Dufay received his musical education as chorister in the cathedral at Cambrai, which in the fifteenth century belonged to the Netherlands. It is famous as the seat of the archbishopric of Fénelon and of Dubois, and for its ancient cathedral. According to contemporary evidence, the music of the Cambrai cathedral was considered ‘the most beautiful in Europe.’[90]
It was but natural, then, that the papal choir at Rome should draw what singers it could from Cambrai. It appears that Dufay entered it as the youngest member in 1428 and remained five years. After a break he was again appointed in the following decade, when he remained but a short period. It was at the time a frequent custom for the church to reward whom it would by ecclesiastical appointments, allowing the holder of office to reside elsewhere. According to this custom, Dufay was appointed to the canonries of Cambrai and Mons, both of which offices he held till his death, though he removed to Savoy about 1437 and travelled somewhat in the interests of his art. He died at a great age in 1474. His will is still preserved in the archives of Cambrai, and in it, among other items, he bequeaths money to the Cambrai altar boys. He is buried in the chapel of St. Etienne, beneath a stone he himself caused to be made, which, though mutilated, is still in existence. One of his last desires was that a certain motet of his own composition be sung at his deathbed.
The chief source of our knowledge of Dufay’s early works is the ‘MS. Canonici misc. 213’ in the Bodleian library at Oxford, compiled not later than 1436, a portion of which has recently been explained and given to the public by Sir John Stainer.[91] The MS. represents the period of transition from Machault to Dufay, including the early works of the latter. They are mostly in the old mensural (black) notation, and show an unusual proportion of secular pieces. Transcriptions and solutions of sixty of them, belonging to the period 1400-1441, are given by Stainer. Most of the pieces are dry in melody and show occasional harsh discords; but they also exhibit examples of fugal form and some crude attempts at expression. They are quite lacking in a certain sweetness of harmony characteristic of his later works, which has been traced to the influence of his famous English contemporary, John Dunstable. It appears advisable, therefore, to consider here the condition of music in England which is thus to make itself felt upon the course of music in general.
Though the twelfth and thirteenth centuries do not, in England, show well-defined groups of musicians working toward a common end, such as constitute a ‘school’ in the accepted sense, there can be no doubt that the English were ahead of their time in the early days of polyphony and that English music strongly influenced composers on the continent. Indeed a very considerable case for the actual origin of polyphony in England has been made out by recent historians of great authority, and the case is supported by the famous old English canon, ‘Sumer is i-cumen in’—one of the earliest extant examples of polyphonic music. The date of this interesting composition is given by Rockstro[92] as not later than 1250. It is a charming melody, composed to a gay, naïve poem, in the form of a round, or canon, for six voices, and is supposed to have been written by John Fornsete, a monk of Reading. In some measures the parallel fifths and octaves show the influence of diaphony, while in others there is excellent counterpoint which might have been written at least a hundred and fifty years later. The imitation is not confined to short phrases, but is consistently carried through in the four upper voices to the close, over two independent basses. The harmony is rather limited, the F major chord being in great preponderance: but, on the whole, the canon shows a high degree of skill in polyphonic writing. It is, in short, a remarkable example of the working out of an inspired folk song with two systems of part writing, which, so far as we know, were not contemporaneous.
One explanation of this apparent anomaly is that the composition, originally the work of a song writer of great natural genius, was later edited or corrected by a learned musician. Parallel octaves and fifths were not considered offensive in the thirteenth century, and such a learned scholar might easily have let them pass, while lifting other parts of the music to an artistic form considerably in advance of popular taste. It has been supposed, on the other hand, that the composition is really the single accidentally preserved specimen of a whole musical literature, which has otherwise been lost. In support of this latter theory it is urged that the art of imitation, as illustrated in the canon, must have reached a point of excellence beyond anything existing in France or Belgium at the time, and could only have been the product of a well-defined school. However the case may be, the song remains, an isolated but for its time brilliant example testifying to the freshness, vitality, and beauty of early English music.
It should be added that, under the auspices of the ‘Plain-song and Mediæval Music Society’ of England, researches have been carried on, resulting in the publication of two volumes,[93] the first containing photographic reproductions of sixty of the most notable examples of English harmonized music prior to the fifteenth century, the second transcriptions thereof into modern musical notation, with explanatory notes. The majority of the examples are written for two voices, and some for three: none of these, however, can compare, in regard to workmanship, with the ‘Sumer’ canon, which is also included in the collection.
Not until the beginning of the fifteenth century do we find actual evidence of a school, and it is interesting to note the points of resemblance between it and the first Netherland school. Both are characterized by a reliance on the plain-chant melody, by a conventional opening, a lack of sensitiveness to discords, an avoidance of the third in the closing chord, and an absence of harmonic effects. Compared with the old French school, however, they show a genuine progress in the abolition of the harsher discords, the use of the third in cadences not final, and in the more frequent employment of imitation.
Representatives of the early English school, it is important to note, were divided into two distinct branches, one remaining for the most part on English soil, while the other identified itself almost wholly with continental schools, and, in respect to style, seems to belong to them. In this latter group was John Dunstable, born about 1390, in Dunstable, England. He died in 1453, and is buried in St. Stephen’s, Walbrock, where an epitaph was said to be inscribed on ‘two faire plated stones in the Chancell, each by other.’ Another, written by the Abbot of St. Albans, is headed:
‘Upon John Dunstable, an astrologian,
A mathematician, a musitian, and what not,’
and the six lines of elegiac Latin which follow bestow upon him heartfelt praise.
Dunstable was a writer of songs both sacred and secular. One of the latter, O Rosa bella, was discovered in the Vatican in 1847, and is one of the most beautiful specimens of the age. Of the two compositions in the possession of the British Museum, one is a sort of musical enigma, a form of composition quite in vogue among the later Netherlanders. The other is a work in three parts of some length, without words, and is found in a splendid volume of MS. music formerly belonging to Henry VIII. Four sacred compositions, two songs, and two motets are in the archives of the Liceo Filarmonico of Bologna.
Even with these few examples of his work, Dunstable’s reputation as a great musician seems to rest on solid ground. More than half a dozen interesting references to him are made in contemporaneous European writings, among them being one by Tinctoris, a Belgian theorist and composer (1445-1511), and another by a French verse-writer, who compares Dufay, Binchois, and Dunstable as song writers, to the advantage of the Englishman. The passage from Tinctoris refers to England as the fons et origo of counterpoint, and cites Dunstable as her chief composer.
Absurd mistakes have crept into the commentaries upon Dunstable. One early writer, Sebald Heyden (1540), claimed that he was the inventor of counterpoint, and another identified him with St. Dunstan. These and other errors were handed down by subsequent writers, until Ambros, in his Musikgeschichte, set most of them right. Of course counterpoint was not, and in the nature of things could not be, the invention of any one man. It was built up gradually, one school contributing a little here, another there, until a comprehensive system was formed.
In England Dunstable’s name was either little known or else it was soon forgotten; for it fails to appear in an important work, Scriptores Britanniæ, published in 1550, scarcely a century after his death. From the fact that all but two of his extant compositions are in continental libraries, and that his reputation, during his lifetime, was evidently far greater in Europe than in England, it is supposed that most of his life was spent abroad. Since none of Dunstable’s compositions appear in the ‘MS. Canonici,’ it is evident that his fame was not established in Europe when the collection was made (not later than 1436). Contemporary references to him, however, begin to appear about that time, or shortly after; and it is a remarkable fact that the compositions of Dufay, which are known to have been written after this date, show a marked advance both in contrapuntal skill and in style over those contained in the ‘MS Canonici.’ In face of the facts that Dunstable was not only an older contemporary of Dufay and Binchois, but that he was also an excellent master of counterpoint and style, it is, therefore, not unreasonable to assume that he was one of the important sources upon which these Gallo-Belgians drew for their instruction and inspiration.
Like the Netherland composers, Dunstable shows a lack of variety and a failure to adapt his music to the sentiments of the words: but he far surpasses them in sweetness and beauty. His works are among the earliest to exhibit a design founded upon resources other than the plain-chant melodies of the Church. He was capable of writing learned musical puzzles, thus foreshadowing the frequent practice of the Netherlanders of the next century; but he also wrote in lighter vein with charm and purity, and definitely renounced the harsh discords employed by Machault and others. It is with good reason, therefore, that scholars have predicated, from these facts, the influence of Dunstable upon the early Netherlanders, even though, in his native land, we find no trace of his teachings until they were imported later from the Low Countries.
Through Dunstable, therefore, we are led back to Dufay and his contemporaries, and the real significance of this first Netherland school. The writers belonging to it were for centuries buried under the fame of the later Flemish composers, Okeghem and his pupils. As will be seen, however, Dufay is to be reckoned, not only as an important pioneer in the strikingly brilliant achievements of the Netherlanders, but also as the actual founder of a school. Learned and well versed in the musical science of his day, he possessed furthermore that indefinable touch of genius which enables a man to build a little higher than his forerunners, and leave art enriched by his labors. A large number of his compositions have been recovered, among them being fifty-nine secular songs, thirty-six sacred songs, eight whole masses, and about twenty sections, or movements, of masses. One hundred and fifty compositions were discovered by Haberl alone, hidden in the archives of Bologna, Rome, and Trieste. Masses and portions of masses are in the Brussels Library, others at Cambrai, still others in the Paris library, and in Munich a motet for three voices.
The oldest datable work is a chanson, Resveillies vous et faites chiere lye, written in honor of the marriage of Charles Malatesta, Lord of Pesaro, and Vittoria Colonna, in 1415. Dufay was one of the first composers to use the unfilled white notes, and it is believed that he introduced other changes in notation. He deserves great credit for discarding, in his later works, the empty fourths and fifths, as well as the parallel fifths, which still disfigured the music of some of the ablest composers of the early fifteenth century. We find, furthermore, in Dufay a more developed, though not very extended, canonic treatment of voices; and, again, there is occasionally noticeable a strong tendency toward expression, as, for example, in the mass, Ecce Ancilla, which is even more interesting on account of its harmonic character. Moreover, after he settled at Cambrai in 1436—that is, after Dunstable’s European fame was established—a new conception, similar to that found in the English composer’s works, seems to animate his compositions. His dry methods change, the different voices become more melodious, the harsher discords disappear, and the use of canon grows more frequent.
The feature of Dufay’s epoch, however, which had a most far-reaching effect, and one which, incidentally, brought the wrath of fifteenth century critics upon his head, was the practice of using in the mass secular melodies in place of the Gregorian cantus firmus. For example, the folk songs, Tant je me déduis, Se la face ay pale, and L’omme armé, were incorporated as ‘subjects’ in a number of masses, which were named after the tunes. The absolute invention of new subjects was foreign to composers of that day, and such familiar tunes, repeated in the various parts of the mass, supplied a familiar nucleus, while the composer’s ingenuity found ample play in weaving about it manifold figures and phrases. This was decidedly a new departure, and one that could not be agreeable to the Church. But the new fashion was no sooner set than other composers eagerly took it up. Dufay’s pupils adopted it and passed it on to the later Netherlanders, who in turn handed it down to the Romans. L’omme armé became such a favorite for the mass that the younger Gallo-Belgians, Faugues and Caron, the Netherlanders Josquin and Lasso, and even the Roman Palestrina, in his early work, made use of it. In appropriating these secular melodies usually only the beginning was employed, and around this were woven contrapuntal devices. In this manner the new melody acquired almost the importance of a theme. Imitation of one part by another, at a greater or less interval of time, is, at present, so inevitably a characteristic feature of every musical composition of a higher order that it is difficult to imagine a time when it was far from being an obvious or necessary element. The invention of this art was for long attributed to Okeghem and his school; though it is now apparent that it was not only practised fifty years earlier by Dufay, but that it was already used as early as 1250, as is seen in the now famous canon ‘Sumer is i-cumen in,’ which has been mentioned above.
This epoch of the activity of the Gallo-Belgians resulted in the firm establishment of what might be called the Netherland style. Technical ingenuity was exalted over beauty of sound; the use of martial tunes and love songs, some of them accompanied by most indiscreet words, prevailed in the mass as long as the old polyphony lasted; and the art of canon, although as yet limited and crude, took its place among the indispensable adjuncts of all musical composition.
Of the three composers of this period who are frequently mentioned together by the old writers, two have already been briefly discussed. The third, Giles Binchois, born about 1400, died in 1460, seven years after Dunstable and fourteen years before Dufay. First a soldier, then a priest, Binchois became chaplain-chantre to Duke Philip of Burgundy in 1452. Like Dufay, he was appointed non-resident canon of the cathedral at Mons. Twenty-eight of his compositions are in the ‘MS. Canonici,’ of which all but one are secular. Six songs and two motets in the Munich library have also been recently discovered and transcribed by Dr. Hugo Riemann. Among Binchois’ extant works are also about a dozen sacred songs and six parts of masses. Like his contemporaries of the same school, Binchois was somewhat more interested in technical performance than in expression. Tinctoris mentions him with great praise as a composer whose fame would endure forever. It is evident, also, from the testimony of contemporary writers, that both Dufay and Binchois were widely celebrated as masters and teachers of counterpoint.
Another Gallo-Belgian, Eloy, born about 1400, produced a mass for five voices, a rarity for that time. This work, called Dixerunt discipuli, is in the Vatican library. Many of the pupils of Dufay and Binchois, among whom were Busnois, Caron, Faugues, Basiron, and Obrecht, became more or less celebrated in their time, and constituted a kind of second generation or transitional school between the first, or Gallo-Belgian, and the later Netherland schools. Growing more familiar with the resources of the contrapuntal method, they improved upon the work of their masters, while adhering, in essentials, to their precepts. Dufay and Binchois, for instance, usually imitated the pattern either in unison or the octave; their followers used also the canon in the fifth, and carried it out with more skill. They discovered the construction of chords, though they still had no idea of rational chord progressions. Busnois, especially, was a more skillful harmonist than Dufay. His fame spread to Italy, and Petrucci[94] included a number of his songs in one of his earliest publications, about 1503. Among these pieces is a four-part chanson, Dieu quel mariage, which, according to Naumann, is remarkable, not only for the refinement of its harmony, but also on account of its masterly treatment of the melody. This is placed partly in the tenor and partly in the alto—a novel feature for the time—with no disturbance of the free motion and canonic flow of the other two parts. Busnois had also more skill in design than Dufay, actually employing the beginning of the melody as a theme, and building upon it the whole canonic structure of the voices.
The spirit of change was upon the art of music, as it had been in turn upon architecture, poetry, and painting. Dry outlines were giving place to greater fullness of detail, to greater richness of coloring, harmony, and expression; but, even as music was the last of the arts to be affected by the renascent vitality of the late Middle Ages, so it was slow in travelling the tortuous course of technical difficulties which had to be conquered before true beauty of expression could be reached. Nevertheless, even at this time, music was a real art, possessing laws, modes of diction, and even traditions. Though it revealed its youthfulness in its limitations and crudeness it was by no means chaotic. The music of the mass already showed definite signs of form. There was a shadowy idea of key distribution, and efforts to arrive at a satisfactory method of modulation are evident on every hand. The compositions of the time begin to show a love of variety and contrast, together with extreme regularity in the matter of rhythm. During this time also it is clear that in some forms of secular music, at least, instrumental accompaniments were used. Sometimes songs, and even motets, were played and not sung; again, instruments were counted upon to assist the voices through difficult passages. The major seventh was not considered unvocal, but the compass of both instruments and voices was exceedingly limited. On every hand efforts were made to break through the bonds of old tradition. In these and other matters it is plain that our first Netherlander had left the Troubadour Machault far behind.