Biography
Among composers active during the early Renaissance, Gilles Binchois occupies a central position, his stature and creative impact placing him on equal footing with Dunstable and Dufay. Together with Dufay he played the decisive part in shaping the Burgundian tradition, at one time identified as the First Netherlands School. The style is marked by lucid textures and the characteristic Burgundian cadence that employs two leading tones. Among his sacred pieces, many of which have vanished, the Te Deum achieved wide currency during his lifetime. Individual mass movements, several Magnificat settings, and additional compositions of notable quality have come down to us. Even so, his rondeaux, or songs, represent his chief legacy. Binchois excelled above all in fashioning melody that is both appealing and individual, qualities evident in Adieu jusques je vous revoye and Mon cuer chante.
Born near 1400 to a prosperous bourgeois household in Binche or Bins, he was the son of Jean de Binche, who served as councilor to Duke Guillaume IV of Hainaut and to the duke’s daughter Jaqueline of Bavaria. This background likely afforded Binchois his earliest musical instruction at the court of Mons and may have included service as a choirboy in a nearby church. The first extant records place him as organist at Ste. Waudru in Mons between 8 December 1419 and 28 July 1423. Two verses from Ockeghem’s lament on Binchois’ death hint at possible military experience. The phrase “honorable worldliness” in that poem may point to his service at the court of William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, during the English campaigns in occupied France, where Binchois first encountered English musical practices that later surfaced in his own output. Whatever the case, he appears to have returned to the Mons region by 1425, by which date he had already composed a substantial number of secular songs. He also wrote a few ballades, among them Ma dame que j’ayme et croy and Adieu mon amoureuse joye.
Binchois entered the Court Chapel in Burgundy as a chaplain sometime between 1426 and 1427, and certainly no later than 1431, when payment records list him fifth in seniority. Ordination as a priest was not required for the post, although some historians maintain that he took holy orders. On 18 January 1431 he supplied his sole isorhythmic motet, Nove cantum melodie, for the baptism of Duke Philip the Good’s son Anthoine. In the 1430s he received an appointment as canon at Ste. Waudru in Mons and around the same period issued a collection of sacred music titled Passions en nouvelle maniere. Throughout these years he continued to accumulate a substantial repertory of sacred works, though his secular output remained larger. No complete mass survives, yet separate sections—Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei—have been preserved. In 1449 he met Dufay, with whom he had grown close, at a gathering of canons in Mons; this was his only documented journey of the decade and one of the few recorded events of that period. A provostship at St. Vincent in Soignies, granted in 1452, allowed him to retire there in February 1453. He retained the revenues from his benefices until his death in 1460. Musical ties evidently persisted in retirement, for both Guillaume Malbeque and Johannes Regis were active in Soignies during those years.
At Binchois’ death, Guillaume Dufay and Johannes Ockeghem each wrote elegies in music, the former referencing two specific chansons by Binchois and the latter his overall manner. Already in 1442 the Burgundian poet Martin le Franc praised Binchois and Dufay for renewing the art of music on the Continent, and Binchois’ chansons supplied models for elaboration and parody to composers throughout the remainder of the century.
Born near 1400 to a prosperous bourgeois household in Binche or Bins, he was the son of Jean de Binche, who served as councilor to Duke Guillaume IV of Hainaut and to the duke’s daughter Jaqueline of Bavaria. This background likely afforded Binchois his earliest musical instruction at the court of Mons and may have included service as a choirboy in a nearby church. The first extant records place him as organist at Ste. Waudru in Mons between 8 December 1419 and 28 July 1423. Two verses from Ockeghem’s lament on Binchois’ death hint at possible military experience. The phrase “honorable worldliness” in that poem may point to his service at the court of William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, during the English campaigns in occupied France, where Binchois first encountered English musical practices that later surfaced in his own output. Whatever the case, he appears to have returned to the Mons region by 1425, by which date he had already composed a substantial number of secular songs. He also wrote a few ballades, among them Ma dame que j’ayme et croy and Adieu mon amoureuse joye.
Binchois entered the Court Chapel in Burgundy as a chaplain sometime between 1426 and 1427, and certainly no later than 1431, when payment records list him fifth in seniority. Ordination as a priest was not required for the post, although some historians maintain that he took holy orders. On 18 January 1431 he supplied his sole isorhythmic motet, Nove cantum melodie, for the baptism of Duke Philip the Good’s son Anthoine. In the 1430s he received an appointment as canon at Ste. Waudru in Mons and around the same period issued a collection of sacred music titled Passions en nouvelle maniere. Throughout these years he continued to accumulate a substantial repertory of sacred works, though his secular output remained larger. No complete mass survives, yet separate sections—Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei—have been preserved. In 1449 he met Dufay, with whom he had grown close, at a gathering of canons in Mons; this was his only documented journey of the decade and one of the few recorded events of that period. A provostship at St. Vincent in Soignies, granted in 1452, allowed him to retire there in February 1453. He retained the revenues from his benefices until his death in 1460. Musical ties evidently persisted in retirement, for both Guillaume Malbeque and Johannes Regis were active in Soignies during those years.
At Binchois’ death, Guillaume Dufay and Johannes Ockeghem each wrote elegies in music, the former referencing two specific chansons by Binchois and the latter his overall manner. Already in 1442 the Burgundian poet Martin le Franc praised Binchois and Dufay for renewing the art of music on the Continent, and Binchois’ chansons supplied models for elaboration and parody to composers throughout the remainder of the century.