A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Dunstable, John

by W. Barclay Squire

DUNSTABLE,^[1] John, musician, mathematician, and astrologer, was a native of Dunstable, in Bedfordshire. Of his life absolutely nothing is known, but he has long enjoyed a shadowy celebrity as a musician, mainly owing to a passage in the Prohemium to the 'Proportionale' of Johannes Tinctoris (1445–1511). The author, after mentioning how the institution of Royal choirs or chapels encouraged the study of music, proceeds: 'Quo fit ut hac tempestate, facultas nostræ musices tarn mirabile susceperit incrementum quod ars nova esse videatur, cujus, ut ita dicam, novæ artis fons et origo, apud Anglicos quorum caput Dunstaple exstitit, fuisse perhibetur, et huic contemporanei fuerunt in Gallia Dufay et Binchois quibus immediate successerunt moderni Okeghem, Busnois, Regis et Caron, omnium quos audiverim in compositione praestantissimi. Haec eis Anglici nunc (licet vulgariter jubilare, Gallici vero cantare dicuntur) veniunt conferendi. Illi etenim in dies novos cantus novissime inveniunt, ac isti (quod miserrimi signum est ingenii) una semper et eadem compositione utuntur.' (Coussemaker, 'Scriptores,' vol. iv. p. 154.) Ambros ('Geschichte der Musik,' ii. pp. 470–1) has shown conclusively how this passage has been gradually misconstrued by subsequent writers, beginning with Sebald Heyden in his 'De Arte Canendi' (1540), until it was boldly affirmed that Dunstable was the inventor of Counterpoint! Ambros also traces a still more absurd mistake, by which Dunstable was changed into S. Dunstan; this was the invention of Franz Lustig, who was followed by Printz, Marpurg, and other writers. It might have been considered that the claim of any individual to be the 'inventor' of Counterpoint would need no refutation. Counterpoint, like most other branches of musical science, can have been the invention of no single man, but the gradual result of the experiments of many. Tinctoris himself does not claim for Dunstable the position which later writers wrongly gave him. It will be noticed that the 'fons et origo' of the art is said to have been in England, where Dunstable was the chief musician; and though Tinctoris is speaking merely from hearsay, yet there is nothing in his statement so incredible as some foreign writers seem to think. So long as the evidence of the Rota 'Sumer is y-cumen in' is unimpeached, it must be acknowledged that there was in England, in the early 13th century, a school of musicians which was in advance of anything possessed by the Netherlands at the same period. Fortunately the evidence for the date of the 'Rota' is so strong that it cannot be damaged by statements of historians who either ascribe it to the 15th century or ignore it altogether. Within the last few years an important light has been thrown upon the relation of Dunstable to the Netherlands musicians Dufay and Binchois, by the discovery (Monatshefte für Musikgeschichte, 1884, p. 26) that Dufay died in 1474, and not, as had been hitherto supposed, some twenty years before Dunstable. Binchois did not die until 1460, so it is clear that, though the three musicians were for a time contemporaries, yet Tinctoris was right in classing the Englishman as the head of a school which actually preceded the Netherlanders and Burgundians.

Dunstable's fame was certainly great, though short-lived. He is mentioned in a manuscript preserved in the Escorial (c. iii. 23), written at Seville in 1480 (J. F. Riano, 'Notes on Early Spanish Music,' p. 65), in two other passages in the Treatises of Tinctoris, in the 'Dialogus in Arte Musica' of John Hothby (Coussemaker, 'Scriptores,' iii. xxxi.), in 'Le Champion des Dames' of Martin Le Franc (d. 1460), and more than once by Franchinus Gaforius, who in Book ii. cap. 7 of his 'Practica Musicae' (Milan, 1496) gives the tenor of a setting of 'Veni Sancte Spiritus' by the English composer.^[2] Yet he was—in his own country at least—so soon forgotten, that his name does not occur in Bale's 'Scriptores Britanniæ' (1550), and Morley ('Introduction,' ed. 1597, p. 178) quotes a passage from his motet 'Nesciens virgo mater virum,' in which he has divided the middle of the word 'Angelorum' by a pause two Long rests in length, as an exmaple of 'one of the greatest absurdities which I have seene committed in the dittying of musick.' The passage is doubtless absurd to modern ideas: but Dunstable's fault was not considered such at the time he wrote. Similar passages occur so late as Josquin's days.

The main difficulty of determining what ground there was for Dunstable's fame lies in the fact that so little of his work is now extant. Gaforius evidently was acquainted with a treatise by him, and the same work is quoted by Ravenscroft, from a marginal note in whose 'Briefe Discourse' (1614) we learn that Dunstable's treatise was on 'Mensurabilis Musice.' Until comparatively recent days it was thought that the fragments printed by Gaforius and Morley were all that remained of his works. But a little more than this has been preserved. A three-part song, 'O Rosa bella,' was discovered in a MS. at the Vatican by MM. Danjou and Morelot ('Revue de la Musique Religieuse,' 1847, p. 244, and another copy was subsequently found in a MS. collection of motets, etc., at Dijon. This composition has been scored by M. Morelot, and printed in his monograph 'De la Musique au XV^e Siecle.' It may also be found in the appendix to the 2nd volume of Ambros' 'Geschichte der Musik.' Its effect in performance, considering the period when it was written, is really extraordinary, and quite equal to anything of Dufay's. Besides these compositions the British Museum possesses two specimens of Dunstable's work. The first is an enigma which has not yet been deciphered. It occurs in a MS. collection of Treatises on Music (Add. MS. 10,336), transcribed by John Tuck at the beginning of the 16th century. Owing to its being written at the end of fol. 18, and signed 'Qd. Dunstable,' an idea has arisen that it forms part of the preceding treatise, which has therefore been sometimes alleged to be the lost treatise; but this is not the case, for the treatise, as Coussemaker has shown, is that which is nearly always ascribed to John de Muris, and Dunstable's enigma is evidently written in to fill up the page. In a similar and almost identical MS. at Lambeth, transcribed by William Chelle of Hereford, the treatise of de Muris and enigma of Dunstable occur in the same juxtaposition. The other composition of Dunstable's in the British Museum is to be found in a magnificent volume which formerly belonged to Henry VIII. (Add. MS. 31,922). It is a three-part composition of some length, without words: the tenor consists of a short phrase which is repeated in accordance with the Latin couplet written over the part. In addition to these may be mentioned a MS. collection of 15th-century Astronomical Treatises in the Bodleian at Oxford, which contains at p. 74, 'Longitudo et latitude locorum praecipue in Anglia, secundum aliam antiquam scripturam de manu Dustapli.' At the bottom of the margin of the page the date occurs: 'Anno Gratiæ 1438 die mensis Aprilis.'

The Liceo Filarmonico de Bologna also possesses an early 15th-century MS., which contains four of Dunstable's compositions, viz. a 'Patrem,' a 'Regina cœli laetare,' and two motets—'Sub tua protectione,' and 'Quam pulchra es.' (Ambros, vol. iii. p. 441.)

This, then, is probably all that remains of the work of this remarkable man. It is hardly sufficient to enable us to judge how well founded his reputation was, but it is enough to show that for his time he was a man of remarkable power. He forms the one link between the early English school which produced the 'Rota,' and the school of the early 16th century which produced such men as Cornysshe, Pigot, and Fayrfax. But between the two there is a distinct break. The men of the later generation are far inferior to their Netherlandish contemporaries, while Dunstable was equal, if not superior, to Dufay and Binchois. This singular fact can only be accounted for by other than purely musical reasons. The death of Dunstable took place in 1453, at the very time when the Wars of the Roses broke out, and for years England was thrown into a state of hopeless confusion and disorganization, which must have stopped the progress of all the arts of civilization.^[3] During this period, music, like everything else, must have suffered, and it is doubtless for this reason that we possess so little of Dunstable's work. On the re-establishment of order under Henry VII. the old English school—probably consisting of only a small knot of men—was dispersed or forgotten, and the inspiration of the Court composers of Henry VII. and of the early years of Henry VIII. was distinctly derived from Burgundy and the Netherlands, which had been making rapid progress under Dufay's successors—Okeghem, Hobrecht, and Josquin—while England, plunged in the miseries of civil war, had forgotten the art in which she had made so good a beginning. Thus it was that Dunstable was forgotten. Fuller, when he came across his epitaphs, made merry that a 'person of such perfection' should be so unknown. The epitaphs are worth reprinting. The first was on his tombstone in St. Stephen's, Walbrook. Stow^[4] says it was inscribed on 'two faire plated stones in the Chancell, each by other.' It runs as follows:—

    Claudit hoc tumulo, qui Cœlum pectore clausit
    Dunstaple I. juris, astrorum conscius illo^[5]
    Judice novit hiramis abscondita pandere cœli.
    Hic vir erat tua laus, tua lux, tua musica princeps,
    Quique tuas dulces^[6] per mundum sperserat^[7] onus,
    Anno Mil. Equater, semel L. trias jungito Christi.
    Pridie natale sidus transmigrat ad astra,
    Suscipiant proprium civom cœli sibi cives.

The other epitaph is preserved in Weever's 'Funerall Monuments' (1631), where it is quoted from a MS. in the Cottonian Library, containing a number of poetical epitaphs written by John of Whethamstede, Abbot of St. Alban's:—

Upon John Dunstable, an astrologian, a mathematician, a musitian, and what not.

    Musicus hic Michalus alter, novnsque Ptholomeus,
    Junior ac Athlas supportans robore celos,
    Pausat sub cinere; melior vir de muliere
    Nunquam natus erat; vicii quia labe carebat,
    Et virtutibus opes possedit vincua omnes.
    Cur exoptetur, sic optandoque precetur
    Perpetuis annis celebretur fama Johannis
    Dunstapil; in pace requiescat et hie sine fine.

[ W. B. S. ]

1. The name is spelt by early authors Dunstaple.
2. See also Book III, cap. 4 of the same work.
3. It has been the misfortune of English music to suffer more than once from political events. The violent interruptions caused by the Information and the Great Rebellion were as disastrous in their effects upon later schools of English music as were the Wars of the Roses upon the school of Dunstable. More peaceably, but no less unfortunately, the advent of the Hanoverian dynasty, with its German court and Italian opera, crushed the school of English opera which Purcell founded.
4. Stow's Survey, 1633, p. 215.
5. Fuller reads 'ille.'
6. 'fulces' (Fuller).
7. 'sparserat artes' (Fuller)