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French Polyphony

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Submitted By tarker135
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During the late Middle Ages, french polyphony gave birth to the chanson- a new, lyric based genre with two to three voices. In the mid 15th century, composers under the rule of the dukes of Burgundy took the standard chanson form and accelerated its evolution through their forward thinking. One of these composers, and one of the earliest of the school, was Gilles Binchois. His chant Dueil angoisseus exemplifies the sound of the time. Staying true to his style, he has strayed from the popular strophic form and has his piece through composed. The top line sings the melody formed with only the first stanza of the text, while a contrapuntal instrumental line accompanies and fills instrumental breaks through the piece. The chant itself is syllabic. The piece, repeated a second time, is led by a flute rather than a vocalist. The flute then plays the melody through once again. However calm and beautiful the chant sounds, the text is quite dark. Not much word painting or anything like that coming up, however we learn that Binchois has gotten his heart broken. The text clearly states that the speaker has a “sad heart which lives in darkness”. Besides the meaning, an interesting aspect of this particular text is its lack of refrain.. There is no catchy chorus to hook on to, just a single stanza of text. This sets up the piece to be what it is, really. It’s a simple piece that is, somewhat, aleatoric, so a refrain would seem almost out of the ordinary in this setting. That’s most likely why Binchois decided that this rather macabre text would ultimately fit his minimally sporadic piece.

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