John Dunstable

John Dunstable (ca. 1390-1453) was the most celebrated English composer of the entire 15th century. His works were known and imitated all over western Europe.

Contemporary documentation of John Dunstable's life is sparse. From his tombstone, which was in St. Stephen Walbrook, London, until it was destroyed in the Great Fire, it is known that he died on Dec. 24, 1453, and that he was also a mathematician and astronomer. Several tracts on astronomy once in his possession are in various English libraries, and from one of these it is known that he was in the service of John, Duke of Bedford, brother of Henry V. John became regent of France in 1422 and maintained a chapel in that country until his death in 1435; thus it is likely that Dunstable was on the Continent for some years. He is mentioned by several contemporary and slightly later theorists. Other information must be deduced from his music and the manuscript sources that preserve it.

Almost all of Dunstable's known works are sacred. There are 20-odd settings of items of the Mass Ordinary (single sections, Gloria-Credo or Sanctus-Agnus pairs, and complete cyclic Masses), 12 is orhythmic motets, some 20 motets and polyphonic settings of liturgical melodies, and 2 secular pieces.

Most of Dunstable's compositions are found in non-insular sources. Almost all of his motets are in a manuscript in Modena (probably copied in Ferrara); some of these motets and most of his Mass music are in sources in Trent and Aosta. Other works are in Bologna, Florence, Berlin, El Escorial, Paris, and Seville. Only a handful of English sources of his music have survived, and many of these are fragmentary. The destruction of musical manuscripts (and instruments) for religious and political reasons at a later time created a situation whereby no major sources of polyphonic music remain in England for roughly the middle years of the 15th century. It is fortunate that English music was so widely admired and copied on the Continent.

Lack of biographical information and precise datings for manuscripts makes a chronology of Dunstable's works very difficult. In a general way, the is orhythmic motets, with their rigidly structured formal frameworks and general harmonic style, look back to techniques popular in the 14th century, and such harmonizations of liturgical melodies as the Magnificat secundi toni and Ave Regina celorum are clear descendants of late-14th century English descant settings. On the other hand, the Missa Rex seculorum and Missa Da gaudierum premia, cyclic Masses with each section built over a common tenor, are innovative works, early examples of a species of composition that was to be a cornerstone of Mass composition for the next century, and some of the nonisorhythmic—and probably later—motets, such as Quam pulchra es and Salve Regina mater mire, anticipate the motet style of the generation of Josquin des Prez with their careful declamatory settings of the text, fuller harmonic style, and independence of the individual voices.

Stylistic features of English music were known to and imitated by such Continental masters as Guillaume Dufay and Gilles Binchois. This can be seen in their music, in the incorporation of a harmonic style more dependent on thirds and sixths and their taking up of such structural devices as the tenor, or cantus firmus, Mass. It is also attested to by writers of the time. Martin le Franc, in his lengthy poem Le Champion des dames (1441-1442), speaks of Dufay and Binchois as having found a new way in music, based on the English style of Dunstable. And Johannes Tinctoris in his Proportionales musices (ca. 1476) maintains that a fundamental change took place in music in the early 15th century, that it originated with Dunstable, and that not only Dufay and Binchois but also such men as Johannes Ockeghem, Anthoine Busnois, and their contemporaries were affected by this new style.

This statement may be exaggerated. The English influence came not only from Dunstable but also from his contemporaries, particularly Leonel Power. But a good case can be made for the suggestion that the diffusion, popularity, and influence of English music were never so great as during the first half of the 15th century, and Dunstable stands at the head of this school.

Further Reading

Stylistic and biographical commentary on Dunstable are in the following standard works: Gustave Reese, Music in the Middle Ages (1940); Manfred F. Bukofzer, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (1950); Frank Llewellyn Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain (1958); and Donald Jay Grout, A History of Western Music (1960).

Additional Sources

Bent, Margaret, Dunstable, London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. □

DUNSTABLE, JOHN

Composer, singer, astronomer, and mathematician; b. Bedfordshire?, England, c. 1370; d. London, Dec. 24, 1453. His only recorded ecclesiastical appointment is a canonry at Hereford cathedral held (almost certainly in absentia ) from 1419 to 1440. His treatise on astronomy is dated 1438, and another such treatise owned by him bears a notation that he was "musician to the Duke of Bedford" (John of Lancaster). As regent in France during the Hundred Years' War, the Duke spent considerable time in Paris, where Dunstable would have met both dufay and binchois, who are said by the poet Martin le Franc to have adopted Dunstable's "contenance angloise." This refers to a peculiarly English style brought to a high degree of perfection by Dunstable, but noticeable also in the music of his greatest contemporaries. Basically, it is a texture from which all but unessential dissonances have been removed, and the resultant harmony sounds effortlessly radiant and crystal clear. Examples abound in his motets in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary and in many of his settings of the Ordinary of the Mass. He was equally competent in the creation of complex iso-rhythmic structures, used in Mass sections and motets, though even here his fondness for consonance and freely flowing melody is never in doubt. He experimented boldly with the integration or pairing of Mass sections, and his cyclical Mass, Rex saeculorum, is one of the earliest of its kind. In all, some 60 of his works have survived and are available in a modern edition.

Bibliography: Complete Works, ed. m. f. bukofzer (Musica Britannica 8; New York 1953). m. f. bukofzer, "English Church Music of the Fifteenth Century," New Oxford History of Music, ed. j. a. westrup 11 v. (New York 1957–) 3:184–193. a. hughes, Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. e. blom, 9 v. (5th ed. London 1954) 2:808–810. Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, ed. n. slonimsky (5th, rev. ed. New York 1958) 410. m. bent, "John Dunstable" in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 5, ed. s. sadie (New York: Grove's Dictionaries of Music Inc., 1980) 720–725. j.-m. evans, "A Unique Cantus Firmus Usage in a 15th-century English Mass Movement," Early Music 26 (1998), 469–476. d. fallows, "Dunstable, Bedyngham, and O rosa bella," The Journal of Musicology 12 (1994), 287–305. d. m. randel, ed. The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music (Cambridge, Massachusetts 1996) 230. b. smith, "John Dunstable and Leonel Power: A Stylistic Comparison" (Ph.D. diss. University of Sheffield, 1993).

[d. stevens]

Dunstable, John (c.1390–1453). Foremost English composer of the 15th cent., whose music circulated widely at a time when English music was extremely influential on the continent. The contemporary French poet Martin le Franc claimed that Dufay and Binchois had taken from him the new consonant English style (contenance Angloise). Very little is known about Dunstable's life and career, although there is evidence that he served John, duke of Bedford, regent in France and brother of Henry V, and Joan, dowager queen of Henry IV. By 1438 he seems to have returned to England to serve Humphrey, duke of Gloucester; two of his motets show links with the abbey of St Albans. Although the attribution of many pieces is uncertain, nearly half his output comprises movements for the ordinary of the mass, including two cyclic settings. The best known of his eleven surviving isorhythmic motets is the four-part Veni sancte spiritus, which is typical in its structural principle of progressive diminution in the ratio 3 : 2 : 1.

Eric Cross

Dunstable, John [ John Dunstaple] (b c.1390; d London, 1453). Eng. composer, astrologer, and mathematician. Leading Eng. composer of first half of 15th cent. Enjoyed Eur. reputation, attested by discovery of his works in early It. and Fr. colls. Was member of households of John, Duke of Bedford and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the latter a noted patron of the arts. Travelled to Europe and was given land holdings in Normandy. Influenced Du Fay and Binchois. Probably first to write instr. acc. for church mus. Wrote masses, isorhythmic motets, etc. Buried in St Stephen's, Walbrook, London (destroyed in Great Fire of 1666). Some works attrib. to him are now known to be by Lionel Power, Binchois, Binet, and others.

Dunstable, John (c.1390–1453) Important 15th-century English composer. Little is known about him, but masses, motets, and a few secular works survive. He gained recognition for his experiments in counterpoint and influenced Guillaume Dufay and Gilles de Binchois.