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.