Background

Dunstaple was probably born in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. His birth date is conjecture based on his earliest surviving works (from around 1410–1420) which imply a birth date of around 1390.

Education

Nothing is known of his musical training and background.

Career

Contemporary documentation of John Dunstable's life is sparse. From his tombstone, which was in St. Stephen Walbrook, London, until it was destroyed in the Great Fire, it is known that he died on Dec. 24, 1453, and that he was also a mathematician and astronomer. Several tracts on astronomy once in his possession are in various English libraries, and from one of these it is known that he was in the service of John, Duke of Bedford, brother of Henry V.

Dunstable became regent of France in 1422 and maintained a chapel in that country until his death in 1435; thus it is likely that Dunstable was on the Continent for some years. He is mentioned by several contemporary and slightly later theorists.

Other information must be deduced from his music and the manuscript sources that preserve it. Almost all of Dunstable's known works are sacred. Most of Dunstable's compositions are found in noninsular sources. Almost all of his motets are in a manuscript in Modena (probably copied in Ferrara); some of these motets and most of his Mass music are in sources in Trent and Aosta. Other works are in Bologna, Florence, Berlin, El Escorial, Paris, and Seville.

Only a handful of English sources of his music have survived, and many of these are fragmentary. The destruction of musical manuscripts (and instruments) for religious and political reasons at a later time created a situation whereby no major sources of polyphonic music remain in England for roughly the middle years of the 15th century. It is fortunate that English music was so widely admired and copied on the Continent.

Lack of biographical information and precise datings for manuscripts makes a chronology of Dunstable's works very difficult. Johannes Tinctoris in his Proportionales musices (ca. 1476) maintains that a fundamental change took place in music in the early 15th century, that it originated with Dunstable, and that not only Dufay and Binchois but also such men as Johannes Ockeghem, Anthoine Busnois, and their contemporaries were affected by this new style. This statement may be exaggerated.

The English influence came not only from Dunstable but also from his contemporaries, particularly Leonel Power. But a good case can be made for the suggestion that the diffusion, popularity, and influence of English music were never so great as during the first half of the 15th century, and Dunstable stands at the head of this school.

Achievements

• His works were known and imitated all over western Europe. Of the works attributed to him only about fifty survive, among which are two complete masses, three sets of connected mass sections, 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 the less well-known 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, Mater misericordiae. 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.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Power and Dunstaple: Masses & Motets

    (Virgin Classics is proud to present a new batch of titles...)

  • Mi Verry Joy: Songs of 15 Century Englishmen
  • John Dunstaple: Musician to the Plantagenets /Orlando Consort

Personality

John was clearly a highly educated man, though there is no record of an association with either Oxford or Cambridge universities.

Connections

John was probably married, based on the record of women sharing his name in his parish.

employer:

John, Duke of Bedford