cadence by moving from imperfect consonance to perfect consonance (here, from third to unison) in
contrary motion. Yet another way of accompanying the same structural pair can be seen at the “medial
cadence” of the rondeau. The superius and tenor again approach a unison; the contratenor, this time, does
not leap up an octave, which would put it out of range, but drops a fifth to double the superius and tenor’s
pitch at the octave.
Thus there is now a choice of three possible contratenor moves (summed up in Ex. 11-26) to
accompany the obligatory cadence-defining movement of superius and tenor. They will coexist throughout
the century, with the second steadily gaining on the first, and (with the standardization of four-part
textures, to be described in the next chapter) with the third finally displacing both of the others.
With more than sixty courtly chansons constituting more than half his surviving output, Binchois was
his generation’s great specialist in the genre, famous as a melodist both in his own day and in ours. Like
Du Fay, he composed mainly rondeaux cinquains, but his greatest achievements were ballades. By the
early fifteenth century, the ballade, the oldest and most distinguished of the courtly song genres, had
become a genre of special grandeur, reserved for special occasions, chiefly commemorative and public.
One of the grandest Franco-Burgundian ballades of all was Deuil angoisseux by Christine de Pisane (or
Pizan, 1364–ca. 1430)—one of the outstanding poets of the day, remembered now (in the words of the
historian Natalie Zemon Davis) as “France’s first professional literary woman”^8 —as set to music by
Binchois for performance at the court of Burgundy.
EX. 11-26 Cadential motion in superius/tenor pair accompanied by three different contratenors, doubled leading toneEX. 11-26B Octave leapEX. 11-26C “V–I”