Concise History of Western Music
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Chapter Index Chapter 1: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome Chapter 2: Chant and Secular Song in the Middle Ages, 400Ð1450 Chapter 3: Polyphonic Music from Its Beginnings through the Thirteenth Century Chapter 4: French and Italian Music in the Fourteenth Century Chapter 5: England and Burgundian Lands in the Fifteenth Century: The Beginnings of an International Style Chapter 6: The Age of the Renaissance: Music of the Low Countries Chapter 7: The Age of the Renaissance: New Currents in the Sixteenth Century Chapter 8: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 9: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 10: Opera and Vocal Music in the Late Seventeenth Century Chapter 11: Instrumental Music in the Late Baroque Chapter 12: Music in the Early Eighteenth Century Chapter 13: The Early Classic Period: Opera and Instrumental Music in the Eighteenth Century Chapter 14: The Late Eighteenth Century: Haydn and Mozart Chapter 15: Ludwig van Beethoven Chapter 16: Romanticism and Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Music Chapter 17: Solo, Chamber, and Vocal Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 18: Opera, Music Drama, and Church Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 19: European Music from the 1870s to World War I Chapter 20: The European Mainstream in the Twentieth Century Chapter 21: Atonality, Serialism, and Recent Developments in Twentieth-Century Europe Chapter 22: The American Twentieth Century
 

Outlines:

  - English Music
  - Music In The Burgundian Lands
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  Listening Guide
Chapter 5: England and the Burgundian Lands in the Fifteenth Century: the Beginnings of an International Style
English Music
  1. General Features of English Music

    1. Close connections with folk style

    2. Major tonality rather than modal system, including more use of imperfect consonances (thirds and sixths)

    3. Homophonic texture (note-against-note)

    4. Contenance angloise (English guise or quality)
      1. English music became known in France
      2. Martin Le Franc (see vignette in CHWM) characterized it as pleasing.

  2. John Dunstable (ca. 1390–1453)

    1. Leading English composer of the early fifteenth century
      1. Worked in France during English rule (1422–1435)
      2. Composed in all of the polyphonic genres of his time

    2. Motet: NAWM 25, Quam pulchra es
      1. Classified as a motet: any polyphonic work on a Latin text other than the Ordinary of the Mass
      2. Text is from an antiphon.
      3. The music is newly composed—not based on chant.
      4. Passages of fauxbourdon (e.g., mm. 12–15): improvised middle voice resulting in inverted triads