Burgundian School

The Burgundian School was a group of composers active in the 15th century in what is now northern and eastern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, centered on the court of the Dukes of Burgundy.

The main names associated with this school are Guillaume Dufay, Gilles Binchois, Antoine Busnois and (as an influence), the English composer John Dunstaple.

In late Medieval and early Renaissance Europe, cultural centers tended to move from one place to another due to changing political stability and the presence of either the spiritual or temporal power, for instance the Pope, Anti-pope or the Holy Roman Emperor.

When France was ravaged by the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), the cultural center migrated farther east, to towns in Burgundy and the Low Countries, known then collectively as the Netherlands.

[1] During the reign of the House of Valois, Burgundy was the most powerful and stable political division in western Europe, and added, a bit at a time, Flanders, Brabant, Holland, Luxembourg, Alsace and Lorraine.

The Burgundian rulers were not merely patrons of the arts, but took an active part: Charles the Bold himself played the harp, and composed chansons and motets (although none have survived with reliable attribution).

After his death, music continued to flourish as before, but the region was split politically, with the duchy of Burgundy being absorbed into France, and most of the Low Countries becoming part of the holdings of the Spanish Habsburgs.

After the death of Dufay in 1474, the most prominent Burgundian musician was Antoine Busnois, who was also a prolific composer of chansons, and who possibly wrote the famous L'homme armé tune.

During the period, the mass transformed from a group of individual sections written by different composers, often using a head-motif technique, to unified cycles based on a cantus firmus.

Later generations, which were no longer specifically associated with either the court or the region of Burgundy but were interlinked by adjacent geography and by common musical practice, included such names as Johannes Ockeghem, Jacob Obrecht, Josquin des Prez, Adrian Willaert and Orlandus Lassus.