English Music

1
Chapter 5

• English Music

2
General Features of English Music

• Discovered by 15th century continental composers
• thirds and sixths
• Homophonic texture

3
Rondellus

• A round, but all voices start together
• Sumer is icumen in

4
Old Hall manuscript

• Chief collection of works
• 15th century England

5
John Dunstable (ca. 13901453)

• Leading English composer of the early fifteenth
  century

6
Quam pulchra es, NAWM 25

• Motet any polyphonic work on a Latin text other
  than the Ordinary of the Mass
• The music is newly composednot based on chant
• Passages of fauxbourdon

7
Carol

• two- or three-part setting of a religious poem in
  popular style
• Form
• Several stanzas, all sung to the same music
• Burden, or refrain, sung before and between
  stanzas
• NAWM 26, opt.

8
Music in the Burgundian Lands

• Burgundian GenresA. MassesB. MagnificatsC. Mote
  tsD. Secular chansons with French texts

9
Gilles Binchois (ca. 14001460)

• master of the
• Rondeau, NAWM 30, De plus en plus
• Poetic form is similar to Machaut's Rose, liz
  (ABaAabAB)

10
Guillaume Du Fay
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NAWM 28, Conditor alme siderum (opt.)

• Hymn setting by Du Fay
• Chant melody in the top voice
• The tenor voice was written out, moving mostly in
  sixths against the top melody until cadencing at
  an octave
• An improvised voice filled in between tenor and
  cantus (marked Faux bourdon in NAWM)

12
Isorhythmic motets

• written for solemn public ceremonies
• In 1436 Du Fay composed Nuper rosarum flores
  (Recently roses) for the dedication of the dome
  of the Church of Santa Maria del Fiore (the
  Duomo) in Florence (see illustration)

13
Nuper rosarum flores

• Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy

14
Mass Types

• Plainsong mass
• each movement is based on a different plainsong
  melody, or cantus firmus
• Motto mass
• each movement begins with the same melodic
  motive, or "head motive
• Cantus firmus mass, or Tenor mass
• each movement is based on the same melody, placed
  in the tenor voice

15
L'homme armé

• Most popular secular cantus firmus

16
Missa se la face ay pale (NAWM 29a and 29b),
after ca. 1450

• The tenor of Du Fay's own ballade from the 1430s
  (NAWM 29a) serves as cantus firmus for the whole
  Mass