Among the signs of the dependence of the Netherland school upon the traditions of secular music were the tendency of leading composers to write purely secular pieces and their constant .use of secular melodies as ' subjects' for their masses and other church works. The absolute invention of 'subjects' being almost unknown, some favorite theme was selected as the thread about which the counterpoint should crystallize. This' subject,' or parts of it, was used over and over in the successive movements of a mass, supplying in the tenor a fixed nucleus more or less familiar, while the ingenuity of the composer consisted in adjusting to it manifold figures and phrases in the other voices, occasionally in imitation.
Not only were the tunes of well-known songs thus incorporated, but in many cases their words were actually sung by the tenor while the other voices were proceeding with the prescribed Latin text - a practice so open to abuse, especially when frivolous or immoral thoughts were suggested, as to call out in the roth century the formal rebuke of the Church. In the beginning, however, this free use of secular materials in the most solemn works was not irreverent, but simply a token of the source whence the whole style of writing came.
About 1420 three young composers stepped forth into activity who inaugurated an era in music-history, namely, Dunstable, Binchois and Dufay. Of these, Dunstable is usually reckoned the pioneer, though Dufay for various reasons has the greater fame as distinctive of the period. Which happened to have been earlier is of no great moment, since they did not So much create a new art as achieve the special advance that had long been foreshadowed, They all pushed forward along similar lines - in secular chansons for two or three voices, in motets of somewhat similar construction, and in formal and stricter settings of the mass (though here Dunstable is not represented by works now extant).
The problem before them was, under the stimulus of secular song, to take the principles of polyphony that theorists had already worked out and to produce definite compositions that should contain enough compressed reflection and sentiment to be artistic. The only method of procedure known was contrapuntal, not harmonic in the modern sense - the interweaving of independent voice-parts around some' subject' or thread of melody adopted as abasis, rather than the unfolding of consequences as such or the exposition of a conspicuous homophonic melody. All the effects in view were strictly vocal, instruments being employed, if at all, only to double the voice-parts, and much depending upon the singers' purity of intonation and sympathy of rendering. Real solo effects were unknown, though usually the voices entered one by one for the sake of individuality. The value of 'imitation,' often strictly canonic, was appreciated. But there was only a vague sense of the utility of dividing works into clear and somewhat commensurate sections as dictated by the modern doctrine of 'form.' Since, then, these early works lack several features now universal, they seem angular and crude to modern taste. But they contained the germ of much that is precious.
The Strong Grip of Censorship: Regulation and Enframing of the Folk Music Artists
