DUNSTABLE AND THE “CONTENANCE ANGLOISE”
One of our best witnesses to Dunstable’s prestige and his role as catalyst comes in the form of an aside in the course of an epic allegorical poem called Le Champion des dames, composed around 1440 by Martin le Franc, a Burgundian court poet. Le Franc, an enthusiastic partisan of the French in the Hundred Years War, wrote the poem to persuade Philip the Good, the Duke of Burgundy, to do what he eventually did: sunder his ties to the English and help the French drive them out. The presence of the English on French soil was baleful, Le Franc maintained; unchecked, it would lead ineluctably to an apocalypse, an end of historical time. Listing its portents, Le Franc pointed with a mixture of pride and dread at the perfection attained by the arts and sciences, beyond which no advance seemed possible. The fateful perfection of music, he alleged, was due especially directly to those accursed Englishmen.
- Citation (MLA):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 11 Island and Mainland." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 21 Sep. 2023. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-011011.xml>.
- Citation (APA):
- Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 11 Island and Mainland. In Oxford University Press, Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 21 Sep. 2023, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-011011.xml
- Citation (Chicago):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 11 Island and Mainland." In Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 21 Sep. 2023, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-011011.xml
