- bers, the Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei being naturally the most
solemn and tender, since they accompany the ceremony of the Communion itself.
45. First Group of Masters.—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 a basis, rather than the unfolding of chord-sequences 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.
John Dunstable (d. 1453) is known only through a few scattered references
and a fair number of compositions. We infer that he was born at Dunstable
(35 m. northwest of London), but when is not known. He is mentioned by a
