Dunstable, Bedyngham and O rosa bella

Abstract

There are 622 French songs for which a composer can be named in the years from about 1415 to 1480. For threequarters of these the ascription is in only a single source. Of the 163 pieces that happen to be ascribed in more than one source, nearly one-third (48; or 29 per cent) have conflicts of ascription. It is easy to conclude that in the matter of early composers and their works we are often living in a fool's paradise. There are no uncontested autographs (indeed very few that have even been suggested), and the few scribes that can be named are marginal figures; so there sometimes seems remarkably little to go on for the historian in pursuit of verifiable fact. Perhaps that pursuit has less appeal today than it had half a century ago. But so long as we continue to use words like it is worth noting that sixty-seven of the eighty-four songs in the main body of Besseler's Dufay edition name him in only one manuscript; my figures suggest that if all of these had another ascribed source perhaps twenty of them could contain a different name.