Sacred Music & History

In 1477, the political landscape of northern Europe changed abruptly with the death of the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold (or Reckless), shown in the thumbnail in an appropriately martial pose by Rubens. After an unsuccessful campaign against the French and the Swiss, Charles and his army were utterly defeated at the battle of Nancy, and Charles himself was slain on the battlefield. His early death without a male heir extinguished the Dukedom and brought an end to the artistic primacy of the Burgundian court.

One of the last of the Burgundian musicians was Antoine Busnois (ca. 1436-1492). Very little is known of his life; he seems to have been a learned and brilliant musician, but a proud and difficult man, and something of a renegade. He was excommunicated at one point for beating a priest (but the excommunication was later remitted), he moved frequently, and his official positions tended to be relatively minor. For a time he was employed at Tours, where Ockeghem was the Treasurer of the Abbey of St. Martin, and he may have been Ockeghem’s pupil. After ten years in the Burgundian court, ending with the death of Charles the Bold, he served Charles’ daughter, Mary of Burgundy, and her consort, the Hapsburg Emperor Maximilian of Austria. After 1482 he dropped from sight again, until his death was recorded by his employer at the time, the chapter of St.-Sauveur in Bruges.

Perhaps not surprisingly, his music reflects not only great talent and learning, but also a certain arrogance: his motet-chanson In hydraulis, while praising Ockeghem and comparing him to Pythagoras, includes a stanza for himself as well. The remaining two stanzas actually explain in detail Pythagoras’ theory of harmonics, with mathematical illustrations. In this, and in the composition’s quirky rhythms and virtuoso displays, as English scholar and conductor Andrew Kirkman observes in his notes to the Hilliard Ensemble’s recording, “it is difficult not to perceive the preening of a young peacock out to impress both his more established colleague and the highly musical and similarly irascible magnate who had recently hired him, the future Charles the Bold.”

But Busnois’ music is beyond reproach. Although he is comparatively unknown now, he was possibly the best known and certainly the most-copied composer of his day, and his reputation was such that, no matter where he was employed, noted singers and instrumentalists quickly joined him. Like Gilles Binchois, Busnois is best known for his chansons, which appear in almost every major collection of the time. We also have three Masses (including of course one based on the popular song “L'homme armé”) and a dozen motets, and many more attributed to him on the basis of style. Complex in structure and full of learned references and difficult puzzles, Busnois’ music at the same time is rich and sonorous. His motet in honor of his patron, St. Anthony Abbot, “Anthoni usque limina,” has text in Latin, Greek and Coptic, and an acrostic that spells out his name (thoughtfully highlighted in red for those who might miss it). Despite all this complexity, the voices cascade harmoniously in smooth, long lines, in imitation but always distinct, and punctuated by the ringing of bells (an attribute of St. Anthony) in time with the tenor line.

Motet “In hydraulis”, performed by Alexander Blachly’s Pomerium. Note particularly the breathless repeated notes in the second stanza, on “hemiolam” – “An interval of a fifth has a frequency half as large again as that of the root ... “

Motet “Anthoni usque limina”, performed by the Capella Sancti Michaelis