For all those reasons, it is often hard to qualify a composer as “minor” in the 15th
century. Any newly discovered musical source or any newly explored documentary
information could radically change the picture, though all those that now seem likely to
have been significant have been mentioned here. The reader can find articles in The New
Grove Dictionary on all known composers before 1450 and most of those from the
second half of the century; there is more recent material on some of them, plus a few
extra entries, in the Dizionario enciclopedico universale. The Illinois Census-Catalogue
gives full information on the known manuscripts containing their work.
David Fallows
[See also: BASIRON, PHILIPPE; BINCHOIS, GILLES; BRASSART, JOHANNES;
BUSNOYS, ANTOINE; CARON, FIRMINUS; CICONIA, JOHANNES;
COMPOSERS, MINOR (14TH CENTURY); CORDIER, BAUDE; DUFAY,
GUILLAUME; OCKEGHEM, JOHANNES; PULLOYS, JOHANNES; TINCTORIS,
JOHANNES]
Basso, Alberto, ed. Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti. 13 vols.
Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1983–90.
Kellman, Herbert, and Charles Hamm, eds. Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of
Polyphonic Music, 1400–1550, Compiled by the University of Illinois Musicological Archives
for Renaissance Manuscript Studies. 5 vols. Neuhausen: Hänssler, 1979–88.
Sadie, Stanley, ed. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 20 vols. London:
Macmillan, 1980.
Strohm, Reinhard. The Rise of European Music, 1380–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993.
COMPUTUS
. Treatise for calculating the dates of religious festivals, especially Easter. The Catholic
church’s use of both a solar and lunar calendar made the calculation of the dates of
religious festivals a complicated matter; to assist the faithful in these calculations, the
computus was devised, a work providing the information needed to determine when
Easter and other mobile feasts would fall in a given year. Examples exist in Latin, Bede’s
De temporum ratione (725) being the best known.
This pseudoscientific genre found proponents, particularly in the Norman realm.
Philippe de Thaün drafted the first vernacular computus, Li cumpoz, in Anglo-Norman
(1113 or 1119); he was followed by Ralph of Lenham, author of a Kalender (1256; 1,330
lines; three manuscripts). An anonymous Traité du comput was written in Évreux before
1267, and there exists an Occitan computus (170 lines; two manuscripts) by Raimon
Féraut (last quarter of the 13th c.). Of these texts, perhaps only that by Ralph of Lenham
was destined for a lay audience.
Wendy E.Pfeffer
[See also: PHILIPPE DE THAÜN]
Philippe de Thaün. Comput (MS BL Cotton Nero A.V), ed. Ian Short. London: Anglo-Norman Text
Society, 1984.
Rauf de Linham. Kalender, ed. Tony Hunt. London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1983.
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