MUSIC IN ENGLAND

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CHAPTER 16

• MUSIC IN ENGLAND

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England during the early Renaissance

• Showing London and Oxford. Oxford University was
  greatly influenced by the University of Paris and
  so were English musical forms influenced by those
  from France. At this time England was very much
  a rural society. Among English cities only
  London, with a population of about 75,000 in
  1300, could boast more than 10,000 inhabitants.

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RONDELLUS

• Despite the influence of French music on the
  English, several distinctive musical styles
  originated in England. One was called rondellus.
  In rondellus, two or three voices engage in
  voice exchange or, more correctly, phrase
  exchange. J.S. Bach later, coincidentally, used
  the same procedure in some of his fugues.
• Voice 1 a b c d e f
• Voice 2 b c a e f d
• Voice 3 c a b f d e

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ROTA AND THE SUMMER CANON

• The English historically have had a fondness for
  glees and catches (canons, or rounds). The most
  famous of all medieval English compositions makes
  use of rondellus technique as well as canon. It
  is entitled Sumer is icumen in (Summer is coming
  in), or simply the Summer Canon. It involves
  four upper voices which sing a canon that
  continually circles back to the beginning (the
  English call this a rota, Latin for wheel).
  Beneath the four-voice rota are two bottom voices
  (the English call a supporting voice a pes, Latin
  for foot). Here the two pes voices sing a
  rondellus, continually exchanging the same two
  phrases.

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The Beginning of the Summer Canon
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ENGLISH FABURDEN

• The English had a fondness for faburden, a type
  of singing that arose when singers improvised
  around a given chant one voice sang above the
  plainsong at the interval of a fourth, and
  another sang below it at a third at the
  beginnings and ends of phrases the bottom voice
  would drop down to form an octave with the top
  one. Faburden was just one specific type of a
  general class of vocal music called English
  discant, an improvised homorhythmic style making
  abundant use of parallel 6/3 chords.

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The technique of faburden applied to a Kyrie
(Anthology, No. 6)
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CONTINENTAL FAUXBOURDON

• English faburden apparently influenced musical
  practices on the Continent because soon, around
  1420, a similar style emerged in France and Italy
  called fauxbourdon. The only essential
  differences between fauxbourdon and faburden
  were
• 1) that in fauxbourdon the pre-existing chant was
  placed in the highest voice, and
  
• 2) composers tended to write out the top and
  bottom voices and leave only the middle voice to
  be improvised

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• A portion of Guillaume Dufays setting in
  fauxbourdon of the hymn Conditor alma with the
  chant (x) lightly ornamented in the upper voice
  and the middle voice following it, improvising at
  the interval f a fourth below.

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KING HENRY V

• Henry V (r. 1413-1422) was a dashing English king
  who ruled brilliantly and died young. He was
  also a composer of sorts, or at least a Gloria
  and a Sanctus is ascribed to Roy Henry, in the
  Old Hall Manuscript

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THE OLD HALL MANUSCRIPT

• A polyphonic Gloria ascribed to King Henry in the
  Old Hall Manuscript, now preserved in the British
  Library. The Old Hall Manuscript is a collection
  of 147 English compositions, mostly Mass
  movements and motets, serving the English royal
  chapel. Several motets in honor of the warrior
  St. George may link the book to the chapel of St.
  George on the grounds of Windsor Castle, near
  London.

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THE CAROL

• King Henrys stunning victory at the Battle of
  Agincourt (1415) was soon celebrated in music in
  Agincourt Carol. The English carol, related to
  the French carole (see Chapter 11), was a
  strophic song for one to three voices, all of
  which were newly composed. The carol begins with
  a refrain, called the burden, which was also
  repeated at the end of each new stanza. What
  results is a the musical form of strophe plus
  refrain, one frequently encountered in Country
  Music today. The first and second burden and the
  first stanza of the Agincourt Carol are as
  follows

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Burden I and II and first stanza of the Agincourt
Carol in honor of Henry V.

• Burden I (two voices)
• Deo gratias, Anglia, redde pro Victoria!
  (England, give thanks to God for the victory)
  
• Stanza I
• Our king went forth to Normandy
• With grace and might of chivalry
• There God for him wrought marvlously
• Wherefore England may call and cry.
• Deo gratias.
• Burden II (three voices)
• Deo gratias, Anglia, redde pro Victoria!

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The Music of Burden II of the Agincourt Carol
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JOHN DUNSTAPLE AND THE CONTENANCE ANGLOISE

• John Dunstaple (c1390-1453) was a mathematician,
  astronomer, and musician who has left us
  approximately sixty polyphonic compositions. His
  style was said at the time to represent the
  contenance angloise (English manner), though it
  is uncertain precisely what this was. One
  element encountered in Dunstaples music is
  pan-consonance, a style in which almost every
  note is a consonant interval couched within a
  triad or a triadic inversion. Dunstaples often
  dissonance-free style can be seen in his
  three-voice motet Quam pulcra es (How beautiful
  thou art), the text of which is drawn from the
  Song of Songs, a particularly lyrical book of the
  Old Testament.

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The beginning of John Dunstaples motet Quam
pulcra es

• There is no dissonant note between the top voice
  and the bass or between the middle voice and the
  bassa dissonance free environment.