By contrast, Tapissier’s texture bristles with “unprepared” and “unresolved” dissonance. The last six
measures of the example abound in instances: triplum G making a seventh with the motetus (and tenor) A,
and then skipping from it; triplum and motetus both skipping to a clashing E-F(#) second, and so on. Such
things had been perfectly normal in the French polyphonic style that grew out of continental discantus.
They will not be found in Dunstable’s piece. To ears trained to regard English descant as the norm, and to
regard Dunstable as the “fount and origin” of viable music, Tapissier’s dissonances can easily seem like
blunders, and it is easy to see why Tinctoris would see fit to censure such music as “ineptly and stupidly
composed.” We have already seen the continental response to Dunstable’s motet style in Du Fay’s Nuper
rosarum flores, analyzed for its numerical symbolism in chapter 8. There it was mentioned that the
beginnings of “the Renaissance,” for music, are often associated with the work of Du Fay (more often, in
fact than with Landini). That is because modern music historiography has, perhaps somewhat uncritically,
adapted the views of Martin Le Franc and Tinctoris—about the significance of the English style as
marking a new beginning for the continent—to the conventional vocabulary of art history. What is
“Renaissance” about Du Fay and his contemporary Binchois is exactly what Martin Le Franc said was
“new” about them: that they “have taken to the English guise and followed Dunstable,” particularly as
regards harmony and part-writing. In fact the continental composers invented new ways—clever
cookbook recipes, actually—for instantly transforming their style and donning that “English guise.”
VOLUPTUOUSNESS AND HOW TO ACQUIRE IT
For a dose of English newness at its most radical, let us briefly consider Dunstable’s most famous
composition, then as now: Quam pulchra es (“How beautiful thou art”), a setting from the Song of Songs
(Ex. 11-19). Verses from that book of the Bible had become exceedingly popular in England as a result of
the burgeoning of votive services addressed to the Blessed Virgin Mary in her role as “neck,” connecting
(and mediating between) the Godhead and the body of the faithful. The love lyrics attributed to King