STEPHEN FRY - OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

Great moment. Truly great moment. Ars nova at its best. And the Mass itself? Well, romantic reports would have it that it was used that night in the coronation of Charles V and, in that respect, signalled the start of a small but perfectly formed golden period in French music.fi

Charles was one of those monarchs who don't come along very often, who loved music. Under his reign, France enjoyed a period as the shining light in world music. From the very year of Charles's coronation until the first twenty years or so of the fifteenth century, France was the centre of the musical universe - its capital city, if you like - a glory mirrored in the separate but corresponding worlds of French Gothic architecture and the learning symbolized by the University of Paris.

If that was France, then what of good old Blighty? Who was raising the standard for rising standards in the world of music? Well, for that we have to look to Dunstable, both the place and the man.

ohn Dunstable was almost certainly born in Dunstable, and his name is probably a derivation of John of Dunstable. He produced some of the most beautiful music of the period, albeit not all of it in England. Lots of his work was eventually found in places like Trent, Modena and Bologna, suggesting that the English presence in Italian music of the time was a very real one. Dunstable eventually died in London, though, but not before having dedicated much of

J» This was thought to have been lost until it resurfaced some 720years later as The Lady in Red'. fi Although many think it dates from much later. his life to gaining approval for one of his lifelong causes euchres -natural rhythms.

Up until now, it was very much the done thing that you set words to tunes, and not the other way round. What I mean is, the words were not as important, therefore you found yourself a great tune and simply fitted the words in. As a result, the natural way of saying the words was often completely lost, along with a lot of their meaning. To get what I'm on about, imagine the way a song sounds when a gramophone is running down. All the words get contorted and pulled about, eventually becoming so slow and tortuous that their original meaning is somewhat lost. Well, Dunstable hated that. Couldn't stand it. So he devoted a lot of his time to fighting the fight for 'natural rhythms', music with words that are sung with the everyday metres as you would say them.

Yes, there is a case for saying he needed to get out more. But, to be fair, it's people like him who, as we'll see, were the crucial cogs you needed if the wheels of music were ever going to turn.

Dunstable was also big in the world of counterpoint. Mmm, dodgy one, this. Counterpoint may not mean much to you now but, back then, it was one of the most contentious subjects in music. And, remember, if it was contentious in music, then it was, at this point anyway, contentious in the Church, and that could spell trouble for anyone who decided to rock the boat. Way back in 1309, one Marchettus of Padua pleaded with the powers-that-be to allow counterpoint into music, but, in a response matched only by Directory Enquiries in its speed, Pope John XXII forbade its use in 1322. Well, no one could say he hadn't had time to think about it. But what was so wrong with counterpoint? Why did the Church hate it so much? And, more to the point, what the hell is counterpoint? OK. Here we go.

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ast things first. Counterpoint is the bits in music where composers get bored with writing just one tune and write a few, instead. Of course, that's fine for them - they probably write them all at different limes, one in the morning, one after lunch, polish another off before the tea interval, that sort of thing. Fine and dandy. Problem starts when they put them all together, because we then have to listen to them all at once. Lots of different parts of the music playing different tunes ALL AT THE SAME TIME. It's a bit like jazz, but without the farty trombone. So this might explain why Pope John XXII thundered at composers in his Docta Sanctorum: 'they cut up melodies with hoquets/ smoothe them with descants, sometimes force upon them vulgar tripla and moteti…' Well, if he had any point at all, he's probably ruined it by spelling smooth wrong. Damn - must have been cursing himself for that. Incidentally, the 'tripla' and 'moteti' in this case would translate as soprano and alto, respectively, with the full four parts at the time going 'triplum, motetus, tenor, contratenor' downwards. Don't say I never tell you anything.

John XXII and his 'docta? didn't appear to bother John of Dunstable, though. Up until his death in 1453, counterpoint was, it's fair to say, his bag. He continued to write his Masses and his isorhyth-mic motets - ones where he repeated the same rhythms even though the music was changing - and was probably even the first to write instrumental accompaniments to church Masses.

Dunstable's period was that of Donatello in Italy, as well as Fra Angelico and the Medicis. In Portugal, they had Gonzalo Cabral and Joao Diaz, the great explorers. And in England? Well, in England, they had the plague again, and a rather unpleasant period of countrywide quarantine. As for Dunstable, his influence was still being recognized some two or three centuries later. And it's said that the person he influenced most was another Guillaume.

Guillaume Dufay was originally from Hainaut in what was then the Low Countries, now the Netherlands (Londoners, try and put the Central Line out of your head), but spent a lot of his time in service with the papal choir. This was quite a cute job around this time, mainly because the papal court was constantiy shifting, and hence Dufay got to see a lot more of the world than just Rome, He spent flHoquets - rather like musical hiccups, this is when a composer leaves gaps in one voice, which he fills with another voice. The resulting effect is of a Ho and fro', a tennis rally, in the music. some time in Cambrai, near the French town of Lille, too, where it is said the Pope himself was very taken with the choir and also the Netherlands. So much so, that when the court shifted back to Rome, he embarked on a programme of importing Netherlands talent. Indeed, at one point, almost the entire papal choir was made up of singers from the Low Countries (did they ever call them Lowlifes?) with just one native Italian singer.

In his day, Dufay was considered the finest composer in the Netherlands, and one of his lasting achievements was in precursing the standard choral setting of today, that of soprano, alto, tenor and bass, with his use of a bass below the tenor and counter-tenor. Try a quick listen to something like 'Ecce ancilla domini', one of his last Masses, and you get the whole glorious idea.

Dufay was effectively both the end of a period known as 'medieval' and the early stirrings of the brand-new - well, almost - all singing, all dancing Renaissance. Born the same year that Chaucer died, 1400, his generation would play host to the Battle of Agincourt, the emergence of the first ever printed books, and the burning of Joan of Arc at the stake in Rouen. Dufay would eventually settle in Cambrai, which he helped make into one of the most talked-about things since the Rouen executioner uttered the unforgettable words, 'Zut! J'ai perdu mes alumettesV But by the time Guillaume returned to the small town of Cambrai, Dunstable was dead, and the Byzantine Empire was gone, with the death of Constantine XL Interestingly enough, though, and perhaps more important for caffeine addicts the world over, the south-west Arabian port of Mocha had become the centre of the coffee-exporting universe.

For now, close your eyes and imagine: cue the noise of small children playing, the sound of water splashing, and the fuzzy barking of a megaphone. 'OK, everybody, it's 1450. New era please. All those with a red, medieval wristband on, please leave the genepool. I repeat, it is now 1450, can anyone with a red, medieval wristband please leave the genepool. It is now the Renaissance era. Thank you.' Aside to his assistant: 'OK, let the Renaissance lot in.' OK it didn't happen quite like that - but at least we're off the starting blocks.