Burgundian School
Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, played the harp and composed chansons and motets. None of his music survives with a reliable attribution. His court sat at the heart of the Burgundian School, a circle of composers active in the 15th century in what is now northern and eastern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Its best-known names were Guillaume Dufay, Gilles Binchois, and Antoine Busnois, with the English composer John Dunstaple as an influence from across the Channel. This school was the first phase of the Franco-Flemish School, the central musical practice of the Renaissance in Europe. Why did music leave France for the territories of a duke? What did these courts ask their musicians to write? And how do we know what survives?
In the 14th century, the busiest centers of music lay in northern France, Avignon, and Italy. Guillaume de Machaut and the ars nova stood for France, the ars subtilior for Avignon, and Landini for Italy. Avignon blossomed briefly because the Papacy sat there during the Western Schism. Cultural life in this era followed power, whether that of a Pope, an Anti-pope, or the Holy Roman Emperor. Then the Hundred Years' War, which ran from 1337 to 1453, ravaged France. The center of gravity moved east, to towns in Burgundy and the Low Countries, then known together as the Netherlands.
Under the House of Valois, Burgundy became the most powerful and stable political division in western Europe. It grew a piece at a time, adding Flanders, Brabant, Holland, Luxembourg, Alsace, and Lorraine. The great patrons were Philip the Good, who ruled from 1419 to 1467, and Charles the Bold, who ruled from 1467 to 1477. Oddly, most of the music was not made in modern Burgundy, whose capital is Dijon, even though the dukes kept an administrative center there. The real hubs were Brussels, Bruges, Lille, and Arras, along with smaller towns nearby.
Historians often draw the line between Medieval and Renaissance music right where this eastward shift happened. Machaut is commonly called one of the last Medieval composers, and Dufay the first significant Renaissance one. That division is conventional and by no means universally accepted.
The Burgundian chapel was organized in 1384, and twenty years later it rivaled the famous establishment at Avignon in splendor. Johannes Tapissier and Nicolas Grenon belonged to this early phase. They carried the tradition into the chapel's reorganization in 1415. Hugo and Arnold de Lantins were also early composers there, and Dufay later met both men in Italy.
Musicians from the surrounding region traveled to Burgundy to study and to advance their careers as the court's reputation spread. The rulers did more than pay the bills. Charles the Bold himself took part in making music. The dukes also encouraged secular composition on a scale that European music had seldom seen before, and that worldly streak is one reason the Burgundian era is seen as a Renaissance phenomenon. It also explains why the surviving repertoire leans so heavily on song and dance.
Guillaume Dufay was probably the most famous composer in Europe in the 15th century. He wrote in many of the forms of his day, and his music was melodic, singable, and memorable. More than half of his sacred music, for instance, consists of simple harmonizations of plainsong. Gilles Binchois was his contemporary and served at the Burgundian court from about 1430 to 1460. Hayne van Ghizeghem was a composer, a singer, and a soldier. He may have been killed in the last military campaign of Charles the Bold.
Dufay died in 1474, and Antoine Busnois then became the most prominent Burgundian musician. Busnois was a prolific composer of chansons. He possibly wrote the famous tune known as L'homme armé, a melody with a remarkable future.
Many other names fill out the school, including Jean Cousin, Johannes Brassart, Pierre Fontaine, Gilles Joye, and Robert Morton. Brassart is dated to about 1400-1455, and Joye to 1424/1425-1483.
Four formes fixes dominated Burgundian secular song: the rondeau, the ballade, the virelai, and the bergerette. All four are known generically as chansons. The rondeau was by far the favorite, and more rondeaux survive than any other form. Most were written in French for three voices, though a few use other languages. In a typical rondeau, only the top voice, called the superius, carried the words. The lower voices were most likely played on instruments. The bergerette was a Burgundian invention. It resembled the virelai but was shorter, with just one stanza.
Instrumental music was also cultivated at the Burgundian courts, often for dancing. The dukes preferred loud instruments such as trumpets, tambourins, shawms, and bagpipes. More of their music survives than for gentler instruments like the lute or the harp. The loud players usually performed from a high place such as a balcony. The quieter instruments stayed closer to the dancers.
The basse danse, also called the bassadanza, was a ceremonial dance of dignified character and slow tempo. It was typically in a duple meter divided into threes, written today as 6/8. A quick dance, either the tordion or the pas de Brabant, often followed it immediately.
More than forty surviving masses are built on the single tune L'homme armé. That makes it the most common melody used as a foundation for mass composition in all of music history. The Burgundians set it, and so did composers of later centuries. David Fallows writes of it in the New Grove: "It is hard to think of any other melody in the history of music that has yielded so much music of the highest quality."
During this period the mass changed shape. It began as a group of separate sections, often by different composers, sometimes linked by a head-motif technique. It became a unified cycle built on a cantus firmus, a borrowed melody that anchors the whole work. Dufay, Binchois, Busnois, and Reginald Liebert all wrote cyclic masses. Most of these composers also wrote Latin sacred music, including motets and cycles of Magnificats. Much of the sacred music that survives comes from those who spent time in Italy, for example in the papal choir.
The motet changed as well. The isorhythmic model of the 14th century gave way to a smoothly polyphonic, sectional style, as in the later work of Busnois. Burgundian motets were usually in Latin and written for three voices, with the top voice the most important. A common technique was fauxbourdon, which harmonizes an existing chant in parallel 6-3 chords, sometimes ornamented to avoid monotony. It kept the sung text clear without the plainness of simple chant. Quam pulchra es, written by Dunstaple in the early 15th century, is one example.
Roughly 65 manuscript sources preserve music by Burgundian composers. The Canonici Manuscript, which covers music from around 1400 to 1440, sits at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It is named after Matteo Luigi Canonici, an 18th-century Venetian Jesuit who once owned it. It holds 380 compositions by 60 composers, with sacred and secular music both well represented.
The Laborde Chansonnier takes its name from the Marquis de Laborde and now rests at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Its 106 pieces were mainly composed during the reign of Charles the Bold, from 1467 to 1477. The Mellon Chansonnier carries the name of Paul Mellon, who gave it to Yale University. It is now in the Beinecke Library and holds 57 compositions from about 1440 to 1477, including some by English and Italian composers.
The El Escorial Chansonnier dates from about 1430 to 1445 and is often called EscA. Of its 62 compositions, only one is attributed, to Gilles Binchois. Scholars have assigned many of the others to Binchois, Dunstaple, Dufay, and more on stylistic grounds alone.
The Dijon Chansonnier, from about 1470 to 1475, is kept at the public library in Dijon and holds 161 pieces. Some are by composers not normally counted as Burgundian, such as Johannes Ockeghem, Loyset Compere, and Johannes Tinctoris.
Charles the Bold was killed in 1477 at the Battle of Nancy, during one of his attempts to add territory to his realm. Music continued to flourish as before, but the political map broke apart. The duchy of Burgundy was absorbed into France, and most of the Low Countries became holdings of the Spanish Habsburgs. Both the French court and the Habsburgs were patrons of music. Even so, a French style began to diverge from that of the Low Countries, especially in secular music, in the period after 1500.
The Burgundian School proved to be the first generation of what is sometimes called the Netherlands School. That school spanned several generations over 150 years and shared the polyphonic style at the mainstream of Renaissance practice. Later generations were no longer tied to the court or the region of Burgundy. Adjacent geography and common musical practice linked them instead. Their names include Johannes Ockeghem, Jacob Obrecht, Josquin des Prez, Adrian Willaert, and Orlandus Lassus. Each inherited a style that Dufay's generation had worked out in the territories of the Burgundian dukes.
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Common questions
What was the Burgundian School in music?
The Burgundian School was a group of composers active in the 15th century in what is now northern and eastern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. They were centered on the court of the Dukes of Burgundy and formed the first phase of the Franco-Flemish School.
Who were the main composers of the Burgundian School?
The main names were Guillaume Dufay, Gilles Binchois, and Antoine Busnois, with the English composer John Dunstaple as an influence. Dufay was probably the most famous composer in Europe in the 15th century.
Why did music move to Burgundy during the Hundred Years' War?
The Hundred Years' War, from 1337 to 1453, ravaged France, so the cultural center migrated east to towns in Burgundy and the Low Countries. Burgundy under the House of Valois was the most powerful and stable political division in western Europe.
What kinds of music did Burgundian School composers write?
They wrote secular chansons in the formes fixes, mainly the rondeau, ballade, virelai, and bergerette, plus Latin masses, motets, and Magnificats. The dukes also favored loud-instrument dance music such as the basse danse.
What is L'homme armé in the Burgundian School?
L'homme armé is a famous tune that Antoine Busnois possibly wrote. More than forty surviving masses use it as a cantus firmus, making it the most common basis for mass composition in music history.
Where are the surviving Burgundian School manuscripts kept?
About 65 manuscript sources contain Burgundian music. The Canonici Manuscript is at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the Laborde Chansonnier is at the Library of Congress, the Mellon Chansonnier is at Yale's Beinecke Library, and the Dijon Chansonnier is at the public library in Dijon.
What happened to the Burgundian School after Charles the Bold died?
Charles the Bold was killed in 1477 at the Battle of Nancy. Music kept flourishing, but Burgundy was absorbed into France and most of the Low Countries went to the Spanish Habsburgs, and a distinct French style diverged after 1500.
All sources
7 references cited across the entry
- 1Wright, Grove
- 2Reese, pp. 4–8
- 3White, John D. (1976). The Analysis of Music, pp.129–130. .
- 5Gleason, pp. 101–102.
- 6Gleason, 95–96
- 7BurgundyCraig Wright — Oxford University Press — 2001