French region, south-east of Paris. During the Middle Ages Burgundy was successively a kingdom (c500–800), a group of counties (800–956) and a duchy (956–1477). Under the dukes of Burgundy of the house of Valois (1364–1477), the Burgundian domain became the most powerful political entity in western Europe (fig.1) and the Burgundian court a centre of musical activity. The importance of the dukes of Burgundy as patrons of music was such that the entire era has come to be called ‘the Burgundian epoch’ and the composers of the period ‘the Burgundian school’. These designations do not mean that music or musicians native to Burgundy were important. The Burgundian court was a cosmopolitan centre, French in language and culture, and the music that emanated from it was international in style.
For music history, the term ‘Burgundy’ is geographically misleading. It is important to note that the ‘Burgundian era’ in music had almost nothing to do with either the Duchy of Burgundy (with its capital in Dijon and a major residence in Beaune) or with the adjoining County of Burgundy, also known as Franche Comté (with its capital in Besançon). Initially the dukes were mainly resident in Paris; and their culture was entirely French. But with the onset of political difficulties surrounding Duke John the Fearless the centre of activity moved to the richest acquisitions of Philip the Bold, namely Flanders and Artois; after about 1410 the Burgundian court was almost permanently resident in the Low Countries, though the dukes were normally buried in Burgundy and they retained an accounting office there (which became subsidiary to the far larger accounting office at Lille established in 1419). When Philip the Good accessed Brabant, Hainault and Holland, he had amassed a formidable economical entity that also had considerable political power, since he owed allegiance to the King of France for some of his lands but to the Emperor for others.
For this reason, the grand flowering of the ‘Burgundian’ era in music happened in the courts at Lille, Arras, Bruges and (from about 1430) particularly Brussels – then, as now, a reluctantly French-speaking city within a thoroughly Flemish area. The chapel singers were almost all drawn from the great churches of the Low Countries. That is why the word ‘Burgundian’ has been a continued matter of dispute among musicologists, many of them preferring terms like ‘Franco-Flemish’, ‘Netherlandish’, ‘Low Countries’, ‘Flemish’ or ‘Northern’.
The domain ruled by the dukes of Burgundy was a patchwork of disparate territories and not a geographical unity (fig.1). Philip the Bold (1364–1404), the first duke, formally received the duchy of Burgundy from his brother, King Charles V, in 1364, and by marriage he added to it the county of Flanders with its wealthy commercial centres of Ghent, Bruges and Ieper. John the Fearless (1404–19) maintained and consolidated the Burgundian holdings at a time when France was being dismembered by the events of the Hundred Years War. Holland, Brabant, Hainault, Limbourg and Luxembourg were added to the patrimony during the long reign of Philip the Good (1419–67). A precipitate attempt by Charles the Bold (1467–77) to seize new territories between Burgundy and the Low Countries led to his untimely death at the battle of Nancy (1477). The duchy of Burgundy was then annexed to the French crown lands, but the Burgundian possessions in the Low Countries were passed to Charles’s daughter and only heir, Marie of Burgundy (1477–82), and ultimately to her son, Philip the Fair (1482–1506).
Such an illustrious dynasty naturally supported a large, resplendent court. The dukes patronized music on a munificent scale and took a personal interest in the art. Charles the Bold, for example, played the harp and is said to have composed chansons and motets (Fallows, D1978, pp.300–24). The musical institutions the dukes maintained consisted of two totally separate forces: a chapel and an assemblage of minstrels.
The chapel of Burgundy was first organized by Philip the Bold in the spring of 1384, and by the time of his death in 1404 it had grown to 28 in number, surpassing in size and splendour the chapels of the king of France and the pope of Avignon. Eight of the new Burgundian singers were engaged from the household of the recently deceased count of Flanders and eight others directly from the papal court. After his father’s death Duke John the Fearless was forced to disband the organization, although he did maintain three to five choirboys under the direction of Johannes Tapissier and later Nicolas Grenon. In summer 1415 the chapel was reconstituted and included the composers Pierre Fontaine, Nicolas Grenon and Cardot. John the Fearless drew most of his singers from the cathedral and collegiate churches of northern France. The Burgundian chapel achieved its greatest fame under Duke Philip the Good. In 1445 it numbered 17 chaplains, two clerks and four sommeliers (porters) and was reported to have been ‘among the largest and best maintained chapels that could be found anywhere’. Besides Fontaine, the ducal musicians included Binchois, Constans Breuwe, Robert Morton and Gilles Joye, all of whom composed. Hayne van Ghizeghem was in the service of Charles the Bold as a singer and chamber valet, and Busnoys was a musician at Charles’s court. The poet Martin le Franc asserted in Le champion des dames (c1440) that he saw Du Fay at the court; in 1446 Du Fay was described as ‘capellanus’ of the duke. Although his appointment at Burgundy was undoubtedly only an honorary one, he specified in his will that Duke Charles should receive from him six books of ‘divers chanteries’.
A member of the chapel of Burgundy was expected to serve as priest, performer, composer, teacher and scribe, assisting at the daily celebration of the Mass and canonical hours. The liturgy at Burgundy was normally sung in monophonic plainchant. On the major feast days of the church year, however, the divine service was made more splendid by the interpolation of polyphonic hymns, mass movements and motets sung from the music books of the chapel library. John the Fearless owned three manuscripts of sacred polyphony and two volumes of works by Machaut; Philip the Good and Charles the Bold added to the collection. Yet despite the attention they gave to religious observance, the dukes of Burgundy at their worldly, luxury-loving court also encouraged secular music.
Much of the secular music in Burgundy was provided by the resident minstrels. Instrumentalists from France, England, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Sicily and the Low Countries were employed. Most played the ‘haut’ (loud) instruments (trumpets, tambourins, bagpipes and shawms); the ‘bas’ (soft) instruments (vielles, harps, flutes, crumhorns and lutes) were less favoured by the dukes. The trumpets and shawms heard at Burgundy were invariably made in the Low Countries, usually at Sluis, Bruges or Brussels. Banquets, baptisms, weddings, jousts, ceremonial entries and conferences of state all occasioned an instrumental display. The Feast of the Pheasant given by Philip the Good in Lille on 17 February 1454 achieved especial renown: 28 minstrels placed in a pie played various instruments including a trumpet, a bagpipe, a crumhorn, tambourins, lutes, flutes and vielles. Like the singers of the ducal chapel, the minstrels of the court were required to follow their lord in all his progresses, even when he went to war.
After the death of Charles the Bold at the battle of Nancy the musical institutions of the court of Burgundy were maintained by Marie of Burgundy and her husband Maximilian I. In 1493 they passed to Charles’s grandson, Philip the Fair; he retained such talented composers as Pierre de La Rue and Alexander Agricola, and so increased the size of the chapel that by the time of his death in 1506 it numbered 33. Under Philip’s son and successor, Emperor Charles V, the musical traditions of the dukes of Burgundy merged with those of the Spanish Habsburgs.
Despite the court’s cultural and musical fame, reported mainly by chroniclers of the time, there is a remarkable shortage of direct evidence for the actual music performed at the court. In the 1980s it became gradually clear that the famous chansonniers of the 1460s and 70s normally called ‘Burgundian’ (among them D-W 287 Extrav, DK-Kk Thott.291 8°, F-Dm 517 and US-Wc M2.1 L25) were almost certainly copied in central France, around the French royal courts. The only musical manuscripts of the 15th century that can possibly be connected with the court of Burgundy are the chansonnier E-E V.111.24 of the late 1430s, the chansonnier fragments D-Mbs cgm 902 (early 1440s) and Mus.Ms.9659 (1460s), the elegant Basse Danse manuscript B-Br 9085 (dated variously between 1465 and 1500) and the choirbooks B-Br 5557 (1470s) and I-Nn VI E 40 (1470s, see L’homme armé); these last three can be associated with Charles the Bold's very special enthusiasm for music. While it can be assumed that most of Binchois’ sacred music – much of it extremely simple – was composed for the court chapel, it is harder to feel confident about much of the other music by the few named composers in the court: it seems increasingly clear, for example, that much of the surviving music by Busnoys was composed before he arrived at the court in 1465; and all but the very earliest songs of Hayne van Ghizeghem seem to be from after he disappears from the court records in 1477. Only after 1500, with the rise of the great scribal workshop later associated with Pierre Alamire is there a substantial body of surviving manuscripts from the court circle.
While the exceptionally extensive and detailed financial records of the duchy report regular and very high payments to the court musicians, there seem to be only two moments in the 15th century when ducal patronage of music was active and enthusiastic. The first was around the time when Duke Philip the Good married Isabella of Portugal (1430), at the same time founding the Order of the Golden Fleece – an institution that seems to have patronized music enthusiastically and has often been associated with the earliest group of masses on the melody L’homme armé. The second was with the brief and stormy reign of Charles the Bold, who has left a splendidly detailed account of the duties of his musicians (ed. in Fallows, D1983); it was evidently Charles who brought Busnoys, Morton and Hayne to the court.
A Chronicles. B Political History. C Documentation. D Musical History. E The Order of the Golden Fleece. F Terminology.
E. de Monstrelet: Chroniques, ed. L.-C. Douët-d’Arcq (Paris, 1857–62)
M. d’Eschouchy: Chronique, ed. du Fresne de Beaucourt (Paris, 1863–4)
G. Chastellain: Oeuvres, ed. H. Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels, 1863–6)
O. de la Marche: Mémoires, ed. H. Beaune and J. Maulbon d’Arbeaumont (Paris, 1883–8)
P. de Commynes: Mémoires, ed. J. Calmette and G. Curville (Paris, 1924–5)
J. Molinet: Chroniques, ed. G. Doutrepont and O. Jodogne (Brussels, 1935–7)
R. Vaughan: Philip the Bold: the Formation of the Burgundian State (London, 1962)
R. Vaughan: John the Fearless: the Growth of Burgundian Power (London, 1966)
R. Vaughan: Philip the Good: the Apogee of the Burgundian State (London, 1970)
R. Vaughan: Charles the Bold: the last Valois Duke of Burgundy (London, 1973)
R. Vaughan: Valois Burgundy (London, 1975)
H. Vander Linden: Itinéraires de Charles, duc de Bourgogne, Marguerite d’York et Marie de Bourgogne (Brussels, 1936)
A. de Lagrange: Itinéraire d’Isabelle de Portugal (Lille, 1938)
H. Vander Linden: Itinéraires de Philippe le Bon, de the Bourgogne (1419–1467), et de Charles, comte de Charolais (1433–1467) (Brussels, 1940)
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G. van Doorslaer: ‘La chapelle musicale de Philippe le Beau’, Revue belge d’archéoloie et d’histoire de l’art, iv (1934), 21–57, 139–65
J. Marix: Histoire de la musique et des musiciens de la cour de Bourgogne sous le règne de Philippe le Bon (Strasbourg, 1939)
E.H. Bowles: ‘Instruments at the Court of Burgundy (1363–1467)’, GSJ, vi (1953), 41–51
D. Fallows: Robert Morton’s Songs (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1978)
C. Wright: Music at the Court of Burgundy, 1364–1419: a Documentary History (Henryville, PA, 1979)
D. Fallows: ‘Specific Information on the Ensembles for Composed Polyphony, 1400–1474’, Studies in the Performance of Late Mediaeval Music, ed. S. Boorman (Cambridge, 1983), 109–59
P.M. Higgins: Antoine Busnois and Musical Culture in Late Fifteenth-century France and Burgundy (diss., Princeton U., 1987)
A.E. Planchart: ‘Guillaume Du Fay's Benefices and his Relationship to the Court of Burgundy’, EMH, viii (1988), 117–71
W.H. Kemp: Burgundian Court Song in the Time of Binchois: the Anonymous Chansons of El Escorial, MS V.III.24 (Oxford, 1990)
F. de Reiffenberg: Histoire de l’Ordre de la Toison d’Or (Brussels, 1830)
H. Kervyn de Lettenhove: La Toison d’Or (Brussels, 1907)
W. Prizer: ‘Music and Ceremonial in the Low Countries: Philip the Fair and the Order of the Golden Fleece’, EMH, v (1985), 113–53
R. Taruskin: ‘Antoine Busnoys and the L'homme armé Tradition’, JAMS, xxxix (1986), 255–93 [with responses by B. Haggh, D. Giller and D. Fallows, followed by a counter-response from Taruskin in JAMS, xl (1987), 139–53]
J. van Benthem: ‘A Waif, a Wedding and a Worshipped Child: Josquin's Ut Phebi radiis and the Order of the Golden Fleece’, TVNM, xxxvii (1987), 64–81
A. Roth: ‘L'homme armé, le doubté turcq, l'ordre de la toison d'or: zur “Begleitmusik” der letzten grossen Kreuzzugsbewegung nach dem Fall von Konstantinopel’, Feste und Feiern im Mittelalter, ed. D. Altenburg and others (Sigmaringen, 1991), 469–79
B. Haggh: ‘The Archives of the Order of the Golden Fleece and Music’, JRMA, cxx (1995), 1–43
P.H. Lang: ‘The So-Called Netherlands Schools’, MQ, xxv (1939), 48–59
V. Féderov: ‘Peut-on parler d'une école bourguignonne de musique au XVe siècle?’, Cahiers techniques de l’art, ii (1949), 29–36
F. Van der Mueren: ‘École bourguignonne, école nérlandaise au début de la Renaissance’, RBM, xii (1958), 53–65
H.L. Clarke: ‘Musicians of the Northern Renaissance’, Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: a Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. J. LaRue and others (New York, 1966), 67–81
CRAIG WRIGHT/DAVID FALLOWS