(b county of Aumale, c1410; d 1461). French poet, churchman and diplomat. He studied at the University of Paris, obtaining the degree of Master of Arts, and entered the service of Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy (later antipope Felix V), probably in the mid-1430s. Most of his numerous ecclesiastical positions stemmed from his connections with the court of Savoy. Named an apostolic protonotary by Felix in 1439, he later became provost of Lausanne Cathedral (from 1443), abbot of the monastery of Novalesa, near Turin (sometime before 1459), and held canonries at Turin (from 1444) and Geneva (from 1447). In March 1447 Felix sent him as papal legate to the court of Philip ‘the Good’, Duke of Burgundy, to whom Martin dedicated his two long allegorical poems, Le champion des dames (1440–42; partly ed. A. Piaget, Lausanne, 1968) and L’estrif de Fortune et de Vertu (1447–8). Even after Felix’s abdication in 1449 Martin remained a protonotary under Pope Nicholas V, and from 1450 served Duke Louis I of Savoy as maître des requêtes. His other extant works include a Complainte du livre du champion des dames a maistre Martin le Franc son acteur (written in response to the poor reception the Champion had received at the Burgundian court; ed. in Paris), a Latin dialogue (Dole, Bibliothèque municipale, 55–7), a rondeau (Le jour m’est nuit, ed. in Raynaud) and a French translation of the Prologue to the book of Jeremiah in the so-called ‘Bible Servion’. The composer Guillaume Du Fay (who also served at the court of Savoy at various times during the 1430s and 1450s) owned a manuscript containing ‘eglogas magistri Martini le Franc’; however, no such eclogues are known to have survived. A poem of 48 verses included at the end of the dedication copy of Le champion des dames may be by him (B-Br 9466, f.180; ed. in Brooks).
Martin le Franc is important to the history of music because of information he provided concerning music and musicians in France during the second quarter of the 15th century, in particular several references he made to Du Fay and Binchois. The earliest of these, dating probably from the mid-1430s, appeared in a letter to the secretaries of the chancellery of Savoy, the primary topic of which is the nature of rhetorical eloquence. In his discussion of the importance of imitatio (the emulation of models) for the art of speaking well, he drew one of his examples from music, noting that a musician was deemed excellent if in his compositions he imitated (‘similfacit’) the ‘celestial concords’ of Du Fay and the ‘most agreeable songs’ of Binchois. Beyond being the earliest written acknowledgment of the two composers’ pre-eminence, the passage is significant as well for its use of rhetorical terminology in referring to music, anticipating a practice that would become more common later in the century.
In the fourth book of his Champion Martin mentioned that the composers Tapissier, Carmen and Cesaris had not long before astonished all Paris with their music. Yet these composers, he said, had been surpassed in excellence by Du Fay and Binchois:
For theirs is a new practice of making elegant concord [frisque concordance] in loud and soft music with ficta, with rests and with mutation [en fainte, en pause et en muance], and they have taken of the English manner [contenance angloise] and followed Dunstable, whereby wondrous pleasure makes their music joyous and famous.
The meaning of these frequently cited lines continues to be a matter of debate among scholars, the scarcity of comparable passages from the period making their precise significance difficult to determine. They have often been interpreted as referring to the putative influence of English music on continental composers of the generation of Du Fay and Binchois, with ‘contenance angloise’ understood as an allusion to certain distinctively English style features. Though Martin employed terms that have specifically musical meanings (‘fainte’; ‘pause’; ‘muance’), how these may relate either to the ‘contenance angloise’ (which he in no way defined) or to a ‘new practice’ of composition is left unclear, as might be expected in a long poetic work that makes only passing reference to music.
In a subsequent stanza of Champion, Martin reported that he had seen Du Fay and Binchois listening with astonishment and envy to two blind musicians of the Burgundian court (most probably the minstrels Jehan de Cordoval and Jehan Ferrendes). This account almost certainly refers to the court’s visit to Chambéry in February 1434 for the wedding of Louis of Savoy and Anne de Lusignan. A miniature in a copy of Champion (F-Pn fr.12476, f.98) depicts Du Fay and Binchois together; Du Fay stands next to a portative organ while Binchois holds a small harp.
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G. Paris: ‘Un poème inédit de Martin Le Franc’, Romania, xvi (1887), 383–437
A. Piaget: Martin le Franc, prévôt de Lausanne (Lausanne, 1888)
G. Raynaud, ed.: Rondeaux et autres poésies du XVe siècle (Paris, 1889/R)
J. Marix: Histoire de la musique et des musiciens de la cour de Bourgogne sous le regne de Philippe le Bon (1420–1467) (Strasbourg, 1939/R)
J. Toussaint: Les relations diplomatiques de Philippe le Bon avec le Concile de Bâle (1431–1449) (Leuven, 1942), 286–90
R. Bossuat, L. Pichard and G.R. de Lage, eds.: Dictionnaire des lettres françaises, i (Paris, 1964, rev. 2/1992 by G. Hasenohr and M. Zink)
O. Roth: Studien zum ‘Estrif de Fortune et de Vertu’ des Martin le Franc (Berne, 1970)
C. Wright: ‘Dufay at Cambrai: Discoveries and Revisions’, JAMS, xxviii (1975), 175–220, esp.180
J.C. Brooks: La filiation des manuscrits du Champion des dames de Martin le Franc (diss., Florida State U., 1976)
D. Fallows: Dufay (London, 1982, 2/1987)
M.R. Jung: ‘Rhétorique contre philosophie? Un inédit de Martin le Franc’, Rhetoric Revalued, ed. B. Vickers (Binghamton, NY, 1982), 241–6
L. Barbey: Martin le Franc: prévôt de Lausanne, avocat de l’amour et de la femme au XVe siècle (Fribourg, 1985)
U. Konrad, A. Roth and M. Staehelin, eds.: Musikalischer Lustgarten: kostbare Zeugnisse der Musikgeschichte, Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, 5 May – 1 Dec 1985 (Wolfenbüttel, 1985), 37–8 [exhibition catalogue]
A. Wathey: ‘Dunstable in France’, ML, lxvii (1986), 1–36
D. Fallows: ‘The contenance angloise: English Influence on Continental Composers of the Fifteenth Century’, Renaissance Studies, i (1987), 189–208
P.R. Kaye: The ‘contenance angloise’ in Perspective: a Study of Consonance and Dissonance in Continental Music c.1380–1440 (New York, 1989), 5–11, 222–69
C. Page: ‘Reading and Reminiscence: Tinctoris on the Beauty of Music’, JAMS, xlix (1996), 1–32, esp.2–4
T. Brothers: ‘Contenance angloise and Accidentals in Some Motets by Du Fay’, PMM, vi (1997), 21–51
CRAIG WRIGHT/SEAN GALLAGHER