Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

WHAT'S THE COUNTERPOINT?

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ast things first. Counterpoint is the bits in music where composers get bored with writing just one tune and write a few, instead. Of course, that's fine for them - they probably write them all at different limes, one in the morning, one after lunch, polish another off before the tea interval, that sort of thing. Fine and dandy. Problem starts when they put them all together, because we then have to listen to them all at once. Lots of different parts of the music playing different tunes ALL AT THE SAME TIME. It's a bit like jazz, but without the farty trombone. So this might explain why Pope John XXII thundered at composers in his Docta Sanctorum: 'they cut up melodies with hoquets/ smoothe them with descants, sometimes force upon them vulgar tripla and moteti…' Well, if he had any point at all, he's probably ruined it by spelling smooth wrong. Damn - must have been cursing himself for that. Incidentally, the 'tripla' and 'moteti' in this case would translate as soprano and alto, respectively, with the full four parts at the time going 'triplum, motetus, tenor, contratenor' downwards. Don't say I never tell you anything.

John XXII and his 'docta? didn't appear to bother John of Dunstable, though. Up until his death in 1453, counterpoint was, it's fair to say, his bag. He continued to write his Masses and his isorhyth-mic motets - ones where he repeated the same rhythms even though the music was changing - and was probably even the first to write instrumental accompaniments to church Masses.

Dunstable's period was that of Donatello in Italy, as well as Fra Angelico and the Medicis. In Portugal, they had Gonzalo Cabral and Joao Diaz, the great explorers. And in England? Well, in England, they had the plague again, and a rather unpleasant period of countrywide quarantine. As for Dunstable, his influence was still being recognized some two or three centuries later. And it's said that the person he influenced most was another Guillaume.

Guillaume Dufay was originally from Hainaut in what was then the Low Countries, now the Netherlands (Londoners, try and put the Central Line out of your head), but spent a lot of his time in service with the papal choir. This was quite a cute job around this time, mainly because the papal court was constantiy shifting, and hence Dufay got to see a lot more of the world than just Rome, He spent flHoquets - rather like musical hiccups, this is when a composer leaves gaps in one voice, which he fills with another voice. The resulting effect is of a Ho and fro', a tennis rally, in the music. some time in Cambrai, near the French town of Lille, too, where it is said the Pope himself was very taken with the choir and also the Netherlands. So much so, that when the court shifted back to Rome, he embarked on a programme of importing Netherlands talent. Indeed, at one point, almost the entire papal choir was made up of singers from the Low Countries (did they ever call them Lowlifes?) with just one native Italian singer.

In his day, Dufay was considered the finest composer in the Netherlands, and one of his lasting achievements was in precursing the standard choral setting of today, that of soprano, alto, tenor and bass, with his use of a bass below the tenor and counter-tenor. Try a quick listen to something like 'Ecce ancilla domini', one of his last Masses, and you get the whole glorious idea.

Dufay was effectively both the end of a period known as 'medieval' and the early stirrings of the brand-new - well, almost - all singing, all dancing Renaissance. Born the same year that Chaucer died, 1400, his generation would play host to the Battle of Agincourt, the emergence of the first ever printed books, and the burning of Joan of Arc at the stake in Rouen. Dufay would eventually settle in Cambrai, which he helped make into one of the most talked-about things since the Rouen executioner uttered the unforgettable words, 'Zut! J'ai perdu mes alumettesV But by the time Guillaume returned to the small town of Cambrai, Dunstable was dead, and the Byzantine Empire was gone, with the death of Constantine XL Interestingly enough, though, and perhaps more important for caffeine addicts the world over, the south-west Arabian port of Mocha had become the centre of the coffee-exporting universe.

For now, close your eyes and imagine: cue the noise of small children playing, the sound of water splashing, and the fuzzy barking of a megaphone. 'OK, everybody, it's 1450. New era please. All those with a red, medieval wristband on, please leave the genepool. I repeat, it is now 1450, can anyone with a red, medieval wristband please leave the genepool. It is now the Renaissance era. Thank you.' Aside to his assistant: 'OK, let the Renaissance lot in.' OK it didn't happen quite like that - but at least we're off the starting blocks.