John Dunstaple or Dunstable (c.
1390 –
December 24,
1453) was an
English composer of
polyphonic music of the late
medieval era and early
Renaissance. He was one of the most famous composers active in the early
15th century, a near-contemporary of
Leonel Power, and was widely influential, not only in England but on the continent, especially in the developing style of the
Burgundian School.
The spelling "Dunstaple" is generally to be preferred, since it occurs in more than twice as many musical attributions as that of "Dunstable". The few English musical sources are equally divided between "b" and "p"; however, the contemporary non-musical sources, including those with a claim to a direct association with the composer, spell his name with a "p."
Dunstaple was probably born in
Dunstable,
Bedfordshire. His birth date is a conjecture based on his earliest surviving works (from around 1410-1420) which imply a birth date of around 1390. Many of the details of his life are conjectural. Nothing is known of his musical training and background. He was clearly a highly educated man, though there is no record of an association with either
Oxford or
Cambridge universities. He is widely held to have been in the royal service of
John, Duke of Bedford, the fourth son of
Henry IV and brother of
Henry V. As such he may have stayed in France for some time, since the duke was
Regent of
France from 1423 to 1429, and then Governor of
Normandy from 1429 to his death in 1435. He owned property in Normandy, and also in
Cambridgeshire,
Essex and London, according to tax records of 1436. After the death in 1437 of another patron, the
Dowager Queen Joan, he evidently was in the service of
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the fifth son of Henry IV.
Unlike many composers of the time, he was probably not a cleric, though there are links with
St Albans Abbey (see below); he was probably married, based on the record of women sharing his name in his parish, and he also owned a manor in
Hertfordshire.
In addition to his work as a composer, he had a contemporary reputation as an
astronomer,
astrologer, and
mathematician (for example, a volume in the
Bodleian Library, largely in the hand of
William Worcester, acknowledges that certain information within it had been copied from Dunstaple's writings). Some of his astrological works have survived in manuscript, possibly in his own hand.
Dunstaple's connections with St Albans Abbey are at least twofold:
the abbot
John Whethamstede is associated with the Duke of Gloucester, and Dunstaple's
isorhythmic motet Albanus roseo rutilat, possibly with some of the Latin words adapted by Whethamstede from an older poem, was clearly written for St Albans, possibly for a visit to the abbey by the Duke of Bedford in 1426.
Whethamstede's plan for a magnificent library for the abbey in 1452-3 included a set of twelve
stained glass windows devoted to the various branches of learning. Dunstaple is clearly, if indirectly, referred to in some of the verses the abbot composed for each window, not only music but also
astronomy,
medicine, and
astrology.
He died on
Christmas Eve 1453, as recorded in his epitaph, which was in the church of
St Stephen Walbrook in London (until it was destroyed in the
Great Fire of 1666). This was also his burial place. The epitaph - stating that he had "
secret knowledge of the stars" - had been recorded in the early 17th century, and was reinstated in the church in 1904.
Dunstaple influence on the continent's musical vocabulary was enormous, particularly considering the relative paucity of his (attributable) works. He was recognized for possessing something never heard before in music of the
Burgundian School: le contenance angloise ("the English countenance,") a term used by the poet
Martin le Franc in his Le Champion des Dames. Le France added that the style influenced
Dufay and
Binchois—high praise indeed.
Writing a few decades later in about 1476, the Flemish composer and music theorist
Tinctoris reaffirmed the powerful influence Dunstaple had, stressing the "new art" that Dunstaple had inspired. Tinctoris hailed Dunstaple as the fons et origo of the style, its "wellspring and origin."
The contenance angloise, while not defined by Martin le Franc, was probably a reference to Dunstaple's stylistic trait of using full
triadic harmony, along with a liking for the
interval of the third. Assuming that he had been on the continent with the Duke of Bedford, Dunstaple would have been introduced to French
fauxbourdon; borrowing some of the sonorities, he created elegant harmonies in his own music using thirds and sixths. Taken together, these are seen as defining characteristics of early
Renaissance music, and both Le Franc's and Tinctoris's comments suggest that many of these traits may have originated in England, taking root in the Burgundian School around the middle of the century.
Very few manuscript sources of Dunstaple's works survived in England, as is similarly the case for other
15th century composers. Even though England was a centre of musical activity, in some respects exceeding even the output of the continent, almost all of the music was destroyed between 1536 and 1540 during the
Dissolution of the Monasteries under
Henry VIII. As a result, most of Dunstaple’s work had to be recovered from continental sources (predominantly northern
Italy and the southern
Alps).
Because numerous copies of his works have been found in Italian and
German manuscripts, his fame must have been widespread. Two problems face
musicologists of the 15th century: first, determining which of the many surviving anonymous works were written by which composers and, second, unraveling conflicting attributions. This is made even more difficult for English composers such as Dunstaple: scribes in England frequently copied music without any ascription, rendering it immediately anonymous; and, while continental scribes were more assiduous in this regard, many works published in Dunstaple's name have other, potentially equally valid, attributions in different sources to other composers, including Binchois,
John Benet,
John Bedyngham,
John Forest and, most frequently,
Leonel Power.
Of the works attributed to him only about fifty survive, among which are two complete masses, three incomplete but multi-section masses, fourteen individual mass sections, twelve complete
isorhythmic motets (including the famous one which combines the hymn Veni creator spiritus and the sequence Veni sancte spiritus, and Albanus roseo rutilat mentioned above), as well as twenty-seven separate settings of various liturgical texts, including three
Magnificats and seven settings of
Marian antiphons, such as Alma redemptoris Mater and Salve Regina misericordie.
Dunstaple was one of the first to compose masses using a single melody as
cantus firmus. A good example of this technique is his Missa Rex seculorum.
He is believed to have written secular music, but no songs in the vernacular can be attributed to him with any degree of certainty: although the French-texted
rondeau Puisque m’amour is attributed to Dunstaple in two sources and there is no reason to doubt his authorship, the
ballade remained the more favoured form for English secular song at this time and there is limited opportunity for comparison with the rest of his output. The popular melody O rosa bella, once thought to be by Dunstaple, is now attributed to John Bedyngham (or Bedingham). Yet, because so much of the surviving 15th-century repertory of English carols is anonymous, and Dunstaple is known to have written many, most scholars consider it highly likely—for stylistic as well as statistical reasons—that some of the anonymous carols from this time are actually by Dunstaple.
Dunstaple was probably the most influential English composer of all time, yet he remains an enigma: his complete works were not published until the quincentenary of his death in 1953, but even since then works have been added and subtracted from his oeuvre; we know very little of his life and nothing of his undoubted learning; we can only make an educated guess at most of the chronology of the small amount of music that has come down to us; and we understand little of his style - why he wrote as he did, what artistic or technical principles guided his composing, how his music was performed, or why it was so influential.
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