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 armé, 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.
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 298