(Busnois; ca. 1430-1492). French composer in the service of the Burgundian court. His works, of which three-voice chansons are most numerous, typify the Franco-Burgundian style in the third quarter of the 15th century.
Busnoys’s name indicates that he or his family came from Busne (Pas-de-Calais), a town in northeastern France. Nothing is known of his early life and education, but in 1461 he was recorded as a chaplain at Saint-Gatien in Tours, at which time he was involved in an attack on a priest and was excommunicated. He did not remain in disgrace for long, since he soon became a singer and minor cleric at the royal abbey of Saint-Martin in Tours and in April 1465 was promoted from the position of choir clerk to subdeacon there. At Tours, he was a colleague and perhaps a student of the famous composer Johannes Ockeghem, master of the French royal chapel and treasurer of the abbey of Saint-Martin. In September 1465, Busnoys sought and received the post of master of the choirboys at Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand, Poitiers, which he held until July 1466.
In his motet In hydraulis, which pays homage to Ockeghem, Busnoys describes himself as “unworthy musician of the illustrious count of Charolais,” referring to Charles the Bold, son of Philip the Good, duke in June 1467. Busnoys was listed as a singer in Charles’s private service in March 1467, and he continued in that position
Busnoys’s rondeau Bel Acueil (“Fair Welcome”), the Mellon Chansonnier. MS 91, fols. lv-2. Courtesy of Beinecke Library for Rare Books and Manuscripts, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
When Charles succeeded his father as duke in June 1467. Busnoys was officially admitted to the ducal chapel in 1471 and, with other members of the chapel, followed Charles on most of his military campaigns, but probably not the last, the disastrous battle at Nancy in 1477, at which Charles was killed.
After Charles’s death, Busnoys served his daughter, Marie de Bourgogne, and her consort, Maximilian of Austria, whom she married in 1478. He remained a member of the Habsburg-Burgundian chapel in the Netherlands until it was temporarily disbanded in 1483 after Marie’s death. He is listed in court documents of that time as a “priest-chaplain.”
Busnoys’s subsequent activities are uncertain, but they may have included a visit to Italy, since some works with Italian texts are attributed to him and his music was widely disseminated there. At the time of his death in 1492, he was choirmaster at Saint-Sauveur in Bruges.
Busnoys’s reputation as a composer during his later years and after his death was exceeded among his contemporaries only by that of Ockeghem. The theorist Johannes Tinctoris dedicated his treatise on the modes (1476) jointly to Ockeghem and Busnoys, and as late as 1529 Pietro Aron called him “a great man and an excellent musician.”
Busnoys was also an outstanding poet. A friend of Jean Molinet, with whom he exchanged poems, he undoubtedly wrote many of the texts he set to music, in the tradition of such earlier poet-musicians as Adam de la Halle and Guillaume de Machaut. His works include two Masses for four voices (L 'homme arme, O crux lignum), a Credo, a Magnificat, eight motets (mostly four-voice), two hymns, and some seventy-five secular pieces, almost all French rondeaux and virelais. His music is characterized by its triadic sonority, strong harmonic progressions, clear structure, and extensive use of imitation, securing for him a central position in the evolution of musical style from Dufay to Josquin.
Margin Picker
[See also: BURGUNDY; OCKEGHEM, JOHANNES]
Busnoys, Antoine. Collected Works. New York: Broude Trust, 1990. Parts 2 and 3: The Latin-Texted Works, ed. Richard Taruskin.
Higgins, Paula M. “Antoine Busnois and Musical Culture in Late Fifteenth-Century France and Burgundy.” Diss. Princeton University, 1987.
--. “In hydraulis Revisited: New Light on the Career of Antoine Busnois.” Journal ofthe
American Musicological Society 39(1986):36-86.
Perkins, Leeman L. “The L ’homme arme Masses of Busnoys and Ockeghem: A Comparison.” Journal of Musicology 3(1984): 363-96.
Taruskin, Richard. “Antoine Busnoys and the L ’homme arme Tradition.” Journal ofthe American Musicological Society 39(1986):255-93.
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