Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T15:10:53.441Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Some English Contemporaries of Dunstable

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Brian Trowell
Get access

Extract

Historians of English music have always found it rather tiresome that so much of their source material for the first half of the fifteenth century survives only in foreign manuscripts, and chiefly in the libraries of North Italy. Very little of this music was available, at any rate in practical editions, until two years ago, when Musica Britannica devoted a volume to the works of John Dunstable; and it is only recently that modern techniques of photography have made these sources abroad accessible to the scholar or editor who lacks the time or the resources to travel. As a result, this very important music has been neglected by historians and performers alike. In the most recent general history of English music, for example, the achievements of Dunstable and his contemporaries are given a mere sixteen pages out of four hundred, though at no time before or since has English music been so famous and so influential abroad. Circumstances are to blame; but it is now high time that this music should be given its due, and there are encouraging signs that such a revival will shortly come about.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 81 , 1954 , pp. 77 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1954

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Musica Britannica VIII, John Dunstable, Complets Works, ed. Manfred F. Bukofzer, London, 1953.Google Scholar

2 Walker, E., A History of Music in England, 3rd. ed., revised and enlarged by J. A. Westrup, Oxford, 1952.Google Scholar

3 Manfred F. Bukofzer, ‘John Dunstable; A Quincentenary Report’, Musical Quarterly XL, no. 1, New York, Jan. 1954, p. 29 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See Besseler, Heinrich, Bourdon und Fauxbourdon, Leipzig, 1950, p. 215.Google Scholar

5 Trent MS 90, no. 941, ff. 188v-189, Anon.Google Scholar

Trent MS 93, no. 1772, ff. 258v-259v, Anon.Google Scholar

Oxford, Bodleian Lib., Add. MS C 87, f. 221v, f. 224, Anon.Google Scholar

Munich MS 3232a, no. 264, ff. 141v-142v, Benet.Google Scholar

6 Trent, Castello del Buon Consiglio, Cod. 87–92.Google Scholar

Trent, Archivio Capitolare, Cod. 93.Google Scholar

For thematic catalogues, see ‘Sechs Trienter Codices. Erste Auswahl’ ed. Guido Adler and Oswald Koller, in Denkmaler der Tonkunst in Oesterreich, Jahrgang VII, Vienna, 1900 (Cod. 87–92); also Id. ‘Fünfte Auswahl’, ed. R. von Ficker, D.T.Ö. Jahrgang XXXI (Vol. 61), Vienna, 1924. (Cod. 93).Google Scholar

7 Many of the anonymous mass-settings in Trent 90 are based on antiphons and responds found in the P.M.M.S. edition of the Sarum Antiphoner, e.g. ‘Fuit homo’, ‘O quam suavis’, ‘Viri Galilei’, ‘Ecce Maria genuit’, ‘Dixerunt discipuli’.Google Scholar

8 Aosta, Seminario Maggiore, MS without shelfmark. List, with thematic catalogue of unica, in G. de Van, ‘A recently discovered source of early fifteenth century polyphonic music’, in Musica Disciplina II, Fasc. 1–2, Rome, 1948, p. 5ff. Byttering is revealed from a concordance with the Old Hall MS.Google Scholar

9 Modena, Bib. Estense, MS aX.1.11 (lat. 471). No full investigation of this important MS yet published. Inventory in Associazions dei musicologi italiani, Catalogo Generale delle Opere Musicali Antiche Italiane, ser. VIII, 1916, p. 15.Google Scholar

10 Florence, Bib. Nazionale Centrale, MS Magl. XIX, 112 bis. Catalogue in Besseler, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft VII, 1925, p. 238.Google Scholar

11 Faenza, Bib. Comunale, MS 117. See Plamenac, Dragan, ‘Keyboard Music of the 14th Century in Codex Faenza 117’, in Journal of the American Musicological Society IV, no. 3, Richmond, Virginia, Fall 1951.Google Scholar

12 Bologna, Bib. Universitaria MS 2216. Thematic catalogue in J. Wolf, Geschichte der Mensuralnotation I, Leipzig, 1004, p. 199ff. See also H. Besseler, “The Manuscript Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria 2216′, in Musica Disciplina VI, Fasc. 1–3, Rome, 1952, p. 39ff.Google Scholar

13 Bologna, Conservatorio di Musica G. B. Martini (Liceo Musicale) MS Q. 15 (37). List in G. de Van, ‘Inventory of the Manuscript Bologna, Liceo Musicale, Q.15 (olim 37)’, in Musica Disciplina II, Fasc. 3–4, Rome, 1948, p. 231ff. Jervays (of the Old Hall MS) is given here as Gervasius de Anglia.Google Scholar

14 See Ramsbotham, A., H. B. Collins, and Dom Anselm Hughes (edd.), The Old Hall Manuscript, P.M.M.S., 3 vols., 1933–38. Also W. Barclay Squire, ‘Notes on an Undescribed Collection of English 15th-century Music’, in Sammelbande, I.M.G., II, 1901, p. 342; Manfred F. Bukofzer, Studies in Mediaeval and Renaissance Music, English ed. London, 1951, II, ‘The Music of the Old Hall Manuscript’.Google Scholar

15 Davey, H., History of English Music (2nd ed.), London, 1921, p. 61.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., p. 70.Google Scholar

17 Nagel, W., Geschichte der Musik in England II, Strassburg, 1897, p. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 See Bukofzer, Studies …, op. cit., pp. 38–39; Musica Britannica VIII, op. cit., Critical commentary; Dom Anselm Hughes, Medieval Polyphony in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1951, p. 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Musica Britannica VIII, op. cit., no. 54; and see notes on p. 186.Google Scholar

20 Musica Britannica VIII, op. cit., no. 35; and see notes. Ibid. no. 37; see notes.Google Scholar

21 Manfred F. Bukofzer, ‘John Dunstable; A Quincentenary Report’, op. cit., p. 38.Google Scholar

22 Jeanne Marix, Histoire de la Musique et des Musiciens de la Cour de Bourgogne sous le règne de Philippe le Bon (1420–67), Strasbourg, 1939, p. 20.Google Scholar

23 Marix, op. cit., pp. 177–179.Google Scholar

24 John Dunstable; A Quincentenary Report', op. cit., p. 45.Google Scholar

25 Wylie, J. H., The Reign of Henry V, II, Cambridge, 1919, p. 30.Google Scholar

26 Annual Reports of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, London, 1840-, no. 42, p. 396: John Gervase presented to a prebend in Bayeux Cathedral, Jan. 16th, 1420. Ibid., p. 413: Gervasd ejected as holding the same prebend unlawfully, May 12th, 1422.Google Scholar

27 Marix, Histoire …, op. cit., p. 203.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., pp. 138, 148.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., p. 149.Google Scholar

30 Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, ed. A. Tuetey, Paris, 1881, p. 200.Google Scholar

31 Marix, Histoire …, op. cit., pp. 23–25.Google Scholar

32 Haberl, F., ‘Die römische “schola cantorum” und die päpstlichen Kapellsänger bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts’ in Vierteljahrschrift für Musikwissenschaft 3, 1887, pp. 189–296. (Reprinted in Bausteins für Musikgeschichte, Leipzig, 1888, III). For discussion of Burgundian singers in the papal chapel, see Marix, Histoire …, op. cit., p. 156.Google Scholar

33 Pirro, A., Histoire de la musique de la fin du XIVe siecle à la fin du XVIe, Paris, 1940, II.Google Scholar

34 Sec Gilbert Reaney, ‘The Manuscript Chantilly, Musée Condé 1047’, in Musica Disciplina VIII, Rome, 1954, p. 59ff.Google Scholar

35 Reaney, op. cit., pp. 63–64; Bukofzer, Studies …, op. cit., pp. 76–77, where Richard Blith (Blich), a musician named in Aleyn's motet, is also discussed.Google Scholar

36 ‘John Dunstable; A Quincentenary Report’, op. cit., p. 31.Google Scholar

37 For dating of this MS, see Besseler, Bourdon und Fauxbourdon, op. cit., pp. 11–13; for list of English works there see Ibid. p. no. This list omits Aleyn's ‘Sub Arturo plebs’, while it misnames Dunstable's ‘Beata dei genitrix’ (no. 289) as ‘Ave regina celorum’.Google Scholar

38 Bologna, f. 86v-87, Zacar; Old Hall no. 30, Anon; Munich MS 3232a, ff. 37v-38v, Zacharie.Google Scholar

39 Bologna ff. 156v-157.Google Scholar

40 Bologna ff. 22v-26. [For list of Benet's works see Appendix.]Google Scholar

41 Nagel, W., Geschichte, op. cit., I, Strassburg, 1894, pp. 135–136.Google Scholar

42 Musica Britannica VIII, op. cit, no. 23.Google Scholar

43 Ibid., nos. 19–22, and see notes (pp. 171–172).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 S. Baring Gould and J. Fisher, The Lives of the Saints (16 vols.), London, 1897–8, III, p. 52ff.Google Scholar

45 Camden, Britannia, London, 1594, p. 305.Google Scholar

46 ‘Instituit primitus suis in temporibus missam beatae virginia cantari cum organo’. (Nagel, op. cit., I, p. 26). For Wheathampstead's gift of a pair of organs to St. Alban's, see Cotton MS. Nero D.VII, f. 8v.Google Scholar

47 See Bukofzer's notes, Musica Britannica VIII, op. cit., p. 174. Also Dom Anselm Hughes, ‘An Introduction to Fayrfax’, Musica Disciplina VI, Fasc. 1–3, Rome, 1952, p. 83ff.Google Scholar

48 See Acta Musicologica VIII, p. 116.Google Scholar

49 Coussemaker, Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova series (1864–76), IV, p. 154.Google Scholar

50 Oxford, Bodleian Lib., Add. MS. C. 87, f. 222 and f. 224v.Google Scholar

51 For references to Plummer (Plomer, Polmier, Polumier), see Harvey, Gothic England, op. cit., p. 87.Google Scholar