The article is devoted to the analysis of the reasons for the change in the sound image of Franco-Flemish music in the 1420s, associated with the influence of English musical practice. The first public appearance of English sacred music on the continent during the Council of Constance (1414–1418) is considered as the source of this process. In
spite of the approval of English music by the Roman Curia, the music of Roman church service had not been immediately changed, and one of the main reasons for that was the
resistance of the papal chapel, which at that time wholly consisted of Frenchmen, who continued by force of habit to consider English music “provincial”. (The “backwardness” of
the English composers showed itself mainly in the absence of the newest rhythmic techniques used by the French masters of Ars subtilior in the last decades of the 14th century).
The situation changed in the 1420s due to close political contacts between the Englishmen and the Burgundians, who fought against the French crown. As a result, the sound image of the music created not only for the French court (since even Paris at that time was under the control of Duke Philip the Good and John Bedford — the regent of France), but also for the papal chapel was transformed. This change, associated with the transition to the English euphonic pitch vertical in the music by G. Dufay, J. Benchois, N. Grenon and others, was later called by M. Le Frank “la contenance angloise” (which can be translated as “English style”). Due to the fact that the English influence was recognized by the Burgundians themselves rather late, the names of the English composers who turned the musical world of the continent upside down (presumably these were L. Power, T. Bittering, John Benet, etc.) were “forgotten” by I. Tinctoris, who considered the source of the new harmony only J. Dunstable, whose works reached the mainland a little later.
1. Karachinskiy, Aleksey Yu. 2003. “Predislovie k russkomu izdaniyu.” In Eyrl, Piter. Zhizn’ i epokha Genrikha V. St. Petersburg: Evraziya. (In Russian).
2. Bent, Margaret. 1987. “A Contemporary Perception of Early Fifteenth-Century Style; Bologna Q15 as a Document of Scribal Editorial Initiative.” Musica Disciplina 41: 183–201.
3. Bent, Margaret. 2007. “Continuity and Transformation of Repertory and Transmission in Early 15th-Сentury Italy: The Two Cultures.” In Kontinuität und Transformation in der
Italienischen Vokalmusik zwischen Due- und Quattrocento, hrsg. von Sandra Dieckmann, Janine Droese, Elfriede Baranowski, 225–246. Musica Mensurabilis 3. Hildesheim, Zurich, and New York: Georg Olms.
4. Bent, Margaret. 2004. “Early Papal Motets.” In Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Rome, edited by Richard Sherr, 5–43. New York: Oxford
University Press.
5. Bent, Margaret. 1966. “Initial Letters in the Old Hall Manuscript.” Music and Letters 47, no. 3: 225–238.
6. Bent, Margaret. 1967–68. “Sources of the Old Hall Music.” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 94, no. 1: 19–35.
7. Bent, Margaret. 2010. “The Earliest Fifteenth-Century Transmission of English Music to the Continent.” In Essays on the History of English Music in Honour of John Caldwell, edited by Emma Hornby and David Maw, 83–96. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.
8. Bent, Margaret. 1996. “The Early Use of the Sign Ф.” Early Music 24, no. 2: 199–225.
9. Bent, Margaret. 2004. “The Musical Stanzas in Martin Le Franc’s ‘Le Champion des Dames’.” In Music and Medieval Manuscripts Paleography and Performance: Essays dedicated to Andrew Hughes, edited by John Haines and Randall Rosenfeld, 91–128. Aldershot: Ashgate.
10. Bent, Margaret. 1973. “The Transmission of English Music 1300–1500: Some Aspects of Repertory and Presentation.” In Studien zur Tradition in der Musik, hrsg. von Hans
Heinrich Eggebrecht und Max Lütolf, 65–83. München: E. Katzbichler.
11. Blackburn, Bonnie J. 2016. “On Compositional Process in the Fifteenth Century.” In Musical Theory in the Renaissance, edited by Cristle Collins Judd, 25–100. New York, London: Routledge.
12. Bowers, Roger. 2004. “Guillaume de Machaut and His Canonry of Reims, 1338–1377.” Early Music History 23: 1–48.
13. Bowers, Roger. 1975. “Some Observations on the Life and Career of Lionel Power.” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 102: 103–127.
14. Brothers, Thomas. 1997. “Contenance Angloise and Accidentals in some Motets by Du Fay.” Plainsong and Medieval Music 6: 21–51.
15. Buckle, Alexandra. 2006. “An English Composer in Royal and Aristocratic Service: Robert Chirbury, c. 1380–1454.” Plainsong and Medieval Music 15, issue 2: 109–122.
16. Caldwell, John. 1991. From the Beginnings to c. 1715. Vol. 1 of The Oxford History of English Music. New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press.
17. Colton, Lisa. 2017. Angel Song: Medieval English Music in History. London, New York: Routledge.
18. Cook, James M. 2014. “Mid-Fifteenth-Century English Mass Cycles in Continental Sources,” vol. 1. Ph.D. diss., University of Nottingham.
19. Cook, James M. 2019. The Cyclic Mass: Anglo-Continental Exchange in the Fifteenth Century. Abindgon, New York: Routledge.
20. Cunningham, David. 1978. “Musical Notation in Netherlandish Painting of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.” Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University.
21. Fallows, David, and Alexandra Buckle. 2005. “Power, Leonel Lionel.” In Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, hrsg. von L. Finscher. Personenteil 13, 862–69. Kassel: J. B. Metzler.
22. Fallows, David. 1982. Dufay. London: J. M. Dent & Sons.
23. Fallows, David. 2018. Henry V and the Earliest English Carols: 1413–1440. Abingdon, New York: Routledge.
24. Fallows, David. 2008. “The Contenance Angloise: English Influence on Continental Composers of the Fifteenth Century.” Renaissance Studies 1, 189–208.
25. Guilielmus Monachus. 1965. De preceptis artis musice. Edidit Albertus Seay. Corpus Scriptorum de Musica 11. [Rome]: American Institute of Musicology.
26. Günther, Ursula. 1963. “Das Ende der Ars Nova.” Die Musikforschung 16: 105–120.
27. Hughes, Andrew. 1965. “Mensuration and Proportion in Early Fifteenth-Century English Music.” Acta Musicologica 37, Fasc. 1/2: 48–61.
28. Ludwig, Friedrich. 1923. “Music des Mittelalters in der Badishen Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.” Zeitschrift für Musicwissenschaft 5 (Jg. 1922–1923): 434–460.
29. McComb, Todd M. [2001]. “John Dunstaple (c. 1390–1453) — A discography.” Accessed December 1, 2021. http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/composers/dunstaple.html.
30. McDonald, Elisa G. 2018. “Uncommon Readers? The Paston Family and the Textual Cultures of Fifteenth-Century East Anglia.” Ph.D. Diss. Norwich: University of East
Anglia School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing.
31. Owens, Jessie A. 2016. Music Historiography and the Definition of ‘Renaissance’.” In Music and the Renaissance: Renaissance, Reformation and Counter-Reformation, edited by Philippe Vendrix, 67–92. London, New York: Routledge.
32. Planchart, Alejandro E. 2018. Guillaume Du Fay: The Life and Works. 2 vols. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
33. Schuler, Manfred. 1966. “Die Musik in Konstanz während des Konzils 1414–1418.” Acta musicologica 38, Fasc. 2/4: 150–168.
34. Stoessel, Jason. 2017. “French-Texted Songs at the Council of Constance: Influences, Paths of Transmission, and Trends.” In Europäische Musikkultur im Kontext des Konstanzer Konzils, hrsg. von Stefan Morent, Silke Leopold, und Joachim Steinheuer, 205–224. Konstanzer Geschichts- und Rechtsquellen 47. Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag.
35. Strohm, Reinhard. 1981. “European Politics and the Distribution of Music in the Early Fifteenth Century.” Early Music History 1: 305–323.
36. Strohm, Reinhard. 1993. The Rise of European Music 1380–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
37. Wathey, Andrew. 1986. “Dunstable in France.” Music and Letters 67, no. 1: 1–36.
38. Wathey, Andrew. 1995. “John of Gaunt, John Pycard and the Negotiations at Amiens, 1392.” In England and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages, edited by Caroline
M. Barron and Nigel Saul, 29–42. Stroud: Alan Sutton.
39. Wathey, Andrew. 1990. “The Peace of 1360–1369 and Anglo-French Musical Relations.” Early Music History, no. 9: 129–174.
40. Wegman, Rob C. 2003. “New Music for a World Grown Old: Martin Le Franc and the ‘Contenance Angloise’.” Acta Musicologica 75, Fasc. 2: 201–241.
41. Widaman, Jean. “The Mass Ordinary Settings of Arnold de Lantins: a Case Study in the Transmission of Early Fifteenth-Century Music,” vol. 1. Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University.