Biography
Fontaine spent his professional life as both a choirboy and a singer attached to the ducal courts of Burgundy and, at one point, to the chapel maintained by Pope Martin V in northern Italy. Any musical instruction he may have received is thought to have taken place at Rouen Cathedral. His surviving output centers on French chansons, although earlier researchers once assigned him several mass movements. The pieces still extant are rondeaux and ballades. These songs are notably brief—often around eleven bars—when measured against those of his contemporaries. Despite the small number of works that remain, he was widely recognized while alive.