ABSTRACT 
 
 
Title of thesis:  INSPIRING A CHORAL REVOLUTION? THE POLYPHONIC 
MUSIC OF EDWARD IV?S BURGUNDIAN EXILE, 1470-1471 
 
Patrick Allies, Master of Music, 2021 
 
 
Thesis directed by:   Professor Barbara Haggh-Huglo 
School of Music 
 
 
In the second half of the fifteenth century, at least half a dozen prominent polyphonic 
choirs in England were transformed, both in terms of their numbers and their vocal range. The 
most prominent example was at St. George?s Collegiate Church, Windsor, where under Edward 
IV the number of boy choristers and lay clerks doubled, and the boys were trained to sing 
polyphony for the first time. One possible contributory factor to this burst of choral development 
is the polyphonic music Edward is likely to have experienced during his exile in the Burgundian 
territories from 1470?1471. Edward?s principal host while in exile was the nobleman Louis de 
Gruuthuse. While staying at Gruthuuse?s Bruges palace, Edward would have been able to hear 
polyphonic music at the neighboring Church of Our Lady, in the Lady Mass, guild services and 
during the concert-like ?lof,? established in 1468. At around this time, Gruuthuse began 
constructing an upper-level oratory looking into Our Lady?s Church, and Edward subsequently 
built a similar space at St. George?s Windsor. These structures are part of a wider Anglo-
Burgundian pattern of music patrons building raised oratories in the period 1450?1500. Oratories 
may have been built, in part, to improve the experience of listening to larger, louder choirs. 
Listening from the oratory would have both reduced the initial-time-delay gap and created an 
 
unobstructed line of listening to the choirboys, allowing their higher frequencies to be heard 
more clearly.  
Despite complex political circumstances, Edward did spend time at Charles the Bold?s 
court. His visits followed a period in which Charles was especially concerned with expanding his 
choir. The duke?s chapel ordinances of 1469 specify six upper voices for singing polyphony. 
This may have been part of a wider phenomenon in the Burgundian territories and later, in 
England, of groups of six choirboys being established in choirs where their role specifically 
included polyphony. The choir at St. Donatian?s in Bruges had at least fifty years of history of 
boys and men singing polyphony together by 1470, and its recruitment and training allied to an 
attractive income and career prospects for its singers made this one of the finest choirs of its kind 
in Europe by the late fifteenth century. The years 1470?1471 would have been a peak in the 
choir?s activity due to the unprecedented spending on copying of music by Gilles de Joye in the 
year?s 1468?1471. The arrangements of St. Donatian?s choir are a possible model for the 
changes Edward went on to make to his choir at Windsor. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
INSPIRING A CHORAL REVOLUTION? THE POLYPHONIC MUSIC 
 OF EDWARD IV?S BURGUNDIAN EXILE, 1470?1471 
 
by 
 
Patrick Allies 
 
Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the 
University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment 
of the requirements for the degree of  
Master of Arts 
2021 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Advisory Committee: 
 
Professor Barbara Haggh-Huglo (Chair) 
Professor Olga Haldey 
Professor Patrick Warfield 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
?Copyright by 
Patrick Edgar Franklin Allies 
2021 
 
             ii 
 
Acknowledgements 
I would like to thank Professor Barbara Haggh-Huglo, Professor Olga Haldey and Professor 
Patrick Warfield for forming my thesis committee, and for my wife and family for their support. 
I am extremely grateful to my supervisor, Professor Haggh-Huglo, for her tireless and generous 
expert help with every part of this project.  
             iii 
Table of Contents 
 
Acknowledgements          ii 
Table of Contents          iii 
Table of Figures          iv 
Disclaimer           v 
Chapter One: Edward IV as Music Patron, and the Circumstances of His Exile  1 
Chapter Two: Louis de Gruuthuse: Royal Host and Music Patron    16 
Chapter Three: Late-Medieval Listening from the Oratory     32 
Chapter Four: Edward IV?s Experiences of Hearing the Choir of Charles the Bold  47 
Chapter Five: The Choirboys and Lay Clerks of St. Donatian?s Church in Bruges  61 
as a Polyphonic Model 
Chapter Six: Conclusion         73 
Bibliography           78 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
             iv 
Table of Figures 
 
Figure 1: Coronation of the Virgin        5 
Figure 2: Map: The Burgundian Territories Under Charles the Bold, 1465/67?1477 15  
Figure 3: Woodcut from Gregor Reisch?s ?Margarita philosophica? (1503)   21 
Figure 4: Gruuthuse Oratory exterior, Our Lady?s Collegiate Church, Bruges  29 
Figure 5: Gruuthuse Oratory interior, Our Lady?s Collegiate Church, Bruges  30 
Figure 6: Edward IV Chantry, St. George?s Collegiate Church, Windsor   31 
Figure 7: Philip the Good at Prayer        33 
Figure 8: The Hours of Mary of Burgundy        40 
Figure 9: The Main Chapel of the Rihour Palace, Lille     43 
Figure 10: The Chapel at Christ?s College Cambridge     44 
Figure 11: Presentation of the Keys of the City to the Virgin    45 
Figure 12: Hereford Cathedral Lady Chapel       46 
Figure 13: C?l?bration de la messe en pr?sence d?un seigneur    60 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
             v 
Disclaimer 
 
The thesis document that follows has had referenced 31 material removed in respect for the 
owner?s copyright. A complete version of this document, which includes said referenced 
material, resides in the University of Maryland, College Park?s library collection. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
             1 
Chapter One 
Edward IV as Music Patron, and the Circumstances of His Exile 
 
Introduction 
In the second half of the fifteenth century, several prominent polyphonic choirs in England were 
transformed, both in terms of their numbers and their vocal range. While in around 1450, 
polyphonic performance was the sole preserve of groups made up of between four and six 
professional adult singers or lay clerks, by the 1480s at least half a dozen important ensembles 
had been remodeled. The updated choirs included at least six boys? voices, and as many as 
twelve singing lay clerks. This study will offer one possible contributory factor to this burst in 
choral growth: the polyphonic music Edward IV experienced during his exile in the Burgundian 
territories from 1470?1471.1  
The music Edward heard during his time abroad is a plausible catalyst for English choral 
developments for three reasons. First, because it immediately preceded a surge in the number of 
choral singers. Between 1472 and around 1490, the choirs at Westminster Abbey, Worcester 
Priory, Winchester Priory, Bristol Abbey and York Minster increased measurably in size.2 
Second, the most dramatic change of all took place at the instigation of Edward himself, as part 
of an overhaul of St. George?s Collegiate Church, Windsor, which included building an entirely 
new chapel. Here, the total number of singers was increased from twenty-three in 1477 to forty-
 
1 Burgundian territory at this time ranged from Amsterdam in the north to Dijon in the 
south, and included parts of modern France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany 
and Switzerland. 
2 Roger Bowers, ?To Chorus from Quartet: The Performing Resource for English Church 
Polyphony, c. 1390?1559,? in English Choral Practice, 1400?1650, ed. John Morehen 
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 31. 
             2 
five in 1482.3 And third, much of Edward?s time in exile was spent either in Bruges or at the 
Burgundian court, which were both leading European centers of polyphonic music. 
There is a rich body of scholarship exploring the impetus for changes to English 
polyphonic choirs during this period.4 The existing explanations for these developments include 
the simplification of mensural notation over time enabling easier training of singers,5 the rise in 
the status of the lay clerk,6 and the recruitment of musicians whose specific role included the 
instruction of boy choristers in singing polyphony.7 Changes to the repertoire of English choirs 
have also been studied, showing an increase in the standard number of voice parts being used by 
composers from three or four in c.1450, to five or more by c.1500, and the extension of the 
conventional vocal compass by almost an octave.8 But to date, no study has explored the 
influence of the practices of leading Burgundian choirs of the time on English ensembles, or how 
Edward?s knowledge and experience of them may have contributed to choral expansions.  
There is also a significant literature on the influence of Burgundy on English life in the 
late-medieval period, in the areas of diplomacy, court administration, and book-collecting.9 In 
 
3 Roger Bowers, ?The Music and Musical Establishment of St. George?s Chapel in the 
15th Century,? in St. George?s Chapel, Windsor, in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Colin Richmond 
and Eileen Scarff (Leeds: Maney, 2001), 199?201. 
4 In the work of Frank Llewellyn Harrison, Magnus Williamson, Roger Bowers, and 
others: Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, 1959; Williamson, ?Parish Music in Late-Medieval 
England: Local, Regional, National Identities,? 2017; Bowers, ?To Chorus from Quartet: The 
Performing Resource for English Church Polyphony, c.1390?1559,? 1999. 
5 Bowers, ?To Chorus from Quartet,? 20. 
6 Ibid., 16. 
7 Ibid., 31. 
8 Ibid., 21. 
9 On diplomacy: M.H.A. Ballard, ?Anglo-Burgundian Relations, 1464?1472? (PhD diss., 
University of Oxford, 1992); on court administration: A.R. Myers, The Household of Edward IV: 
The Black Book and the Ordinance of 1478 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959); on 
book-collecting: Margaret Kekewich, ?Edward IV, William Caxton, and Literary Patronage in 
             3 
terms of music, however, England in the fifteenth century has traditionally been viewed, as 
James Cook puts it, as ?both isolated and peripheral.?10 But Cook argues that this is a misreading 
induced by the fragmentary state of English sources. He points to the prevalence of English 
music in continental volumes, and suggests that this was likely a reciprocal relationship.11 One of 
Cook?s examples that relates to this study is the Lucca Choirbook, Lucca, Archivio di Stato, Ms. 
238, which Reinhard Strohm argues was compiled in Bruges between 1467 and 1472,12 most 
likely for the Merchant Adventurers, an English association of traders based in the city.13 The 
manuscript is incomplete, but the fragments of seventeen masses, nine motets and two 
magnificats suggest that it contained a wide range of English music from c.1440 to 1470,14 as 
well as music connected to Bruges by Du Fay and others.15 A similar example is Brussels, Royal 
Library, Ms. 5557,16 a choirbook that is thought to have been assembled in part for the wedding 
in 1468 of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, to Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV.17 It 
 
Yorkist England,? The Modern Language Review 66, no. 3 (1971): 481?7; and on Music: James 
Cook, The Cyclic Mass: Anglo-Continental Exchange in the Fifteenth Century (Abingdon: 
Routledge, 2020). 
10 Cook, The Cyclic Mass: Anglo-Continental Exchange in the Fifteenth Century, 3. 
11 Ibid., 4?6. 
12 Reinhard Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 
1990), 123. 
13 Cook, The Cyclic Mass: Anglo-Continental Exchange in the Fifteenth Century, 11, 
citing Reinhard Strohm, The Lucca Choirbook: Lucca, Archivio di Stato, Ms 238; Lucca, 
Archivio Arcivescovile, Ms 97; Pisa, Archivio Arcivescovile, Biblioteca Maffi, cartella 11/III 
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 1?34. 
14 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 123. 
15 Ibid., 129. See also: Rob C. Wegman, ed., Choirbook of the Burgundian Court Chapel: 
Brussel, Koninklijke Bibliotheek ms. 5557 (Peer: Musica Alamire, 1989). 
16 Cook, The Cyclic Mass: Anglo-Continental Exchange in the Fifteenth Century, 54?6, 
discusses this. 
17 Klaas Van der Heide, ?New Claims for a Burgundian Origin of the L?homme Arme 
Tradition, and a Different View on the Relative Positions of the Earliest Masses in the 
             4 
contains three masses by the Englishman, Walter Frye, alongside music by Du Fay, Busnois, 
Ockeghem, and others. Frye?s music was prominent enough in the Burgundian territories that his 
motet Ave regina caelorum was depicted in the hands of the angels in Coronation of the Virgin, 
by Bruges painter The Master of the Legend of St.  Lucy.18 The painting is reproduced on the 
next page, with the angels holding sheet music to the left and right of the Virgin?s head, in the 
upper center of the image (see Figure 2). 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Tradition,? Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 55, 
no. 1 (2005): 27. 
18 Reinhard Strohm, ?Music, Ritual, and Painting in Fifteenth-Century Bruges,? in Hans 
Memling: Essays, ed. Dirk de Vos (Ghent: Ludion, 1994), 38?9. 
             5 
Figure 1: Coronation of the Virgin, The Master of the Legend of St.  Lucy, Washington DC, 
National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection. Open Access image. 
 
 
             6 
This study builds on these arguments for a pattern of cultural exchange between England 
and Burgundian territory by exploring the polyphonic ensembles that Edward and his entourage 
? including his brother Richard, who would become Richard III ? would have surely heard 
during their time in exile, with a particular focus on those at the Burgundian court, and the two 
Bruges churches with the most ambitious polyphonic music, Our Lady?s Collegiate Church and 
St. Donatian?s. I will then draw connections between the number of singers and performance 
practice of these ensembles and the reshaping of their English counterparts that followed. 
  
The Circumstances of Edward?s Burgundian Exile 
Edward was crowned King of England in 1461 after a period of chaotic and bloody struggle. His 
coronation had to be postponed while he crushed a rebel army still loyal to the Lancastrian Henry 
VI.19 The first period of Edward?s reign, 1461?1470, was shaped by threats to his authority and 
to the safety of his kingdom. He was occupied by a campaign of resistance from those loyal to 
the House of Lancaster and the very real threat of an invasion from France.20 
Charles Ross describes the years from 1469 to 1471, the final part of Edward?s first reign, 
as ?a period of political instability without parallel in English history since 1066.?21 Edward 
initially lost power to his former ally, the Earl of Warwick, for several months in 1469, before 
regaining control. Warwick rebelled again in the spring of 1470 but was repulsed and fled to 
northern France. From there, Warwick mounted an invasion of England in September of the 
same year. Edward appeared to be in a strong position to quash this new threat until a betrayal by 
John Neville, Marquess of Montagu, who had been assembling troops on his behalf, prompted 
 
19 Charles Ross, Edward IV (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 66?70. 
20 Ibid., 77?80. 
21 Ibid., 174. 
             7 
the king to flee on October 2, 1470, for the Low Countries.22 In Edward?s absence, Henry VI was 
soon restored to the English throne. 
While Edward, Richard and their courtiers were no doubt resilient, hardened by years of 
civil war, the personal trauma of this situation must be acknowledged. The king, in particular, 
was not only fleeing his country and his throne, but also his heavily pregnant wife. Elizabeth 
Woodville sought sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, where she gave birth to a son (who would 
become Edward V) on November 2, one month after King Edward had fled the country.23 
  After a dangerous journey, during which Edward and his supporters were almost captured 
by Hanseatic ships, the deposed king landed near Alkmaar.24 Here he appears to have had a 
stroke of luck: this part of the coast fell under the control of the governor of Holland, Louis de 
Gruuthuse. A trusted lieutenant of the Duke of Burgundy Charles the Bold, Gruuthuse had 
previously made Edward?s acquaintance, and was now charged with hosting the king.25 
Gruuthuse ensured that Edward and his entourage received safe passage to The Hague, and then 
continued to be the king?s principal host during his exile, including the time he spent at 
Gruuthuse?s townhouse in Bruges and nearby castle at Oostcamp.26 This was propitious in terms 
of the king?s safety, as the escape from England had been so hasty that Edward and his party 
were vulnerable; without money, the king is said to have given a fur gown to compensate the 
 
22 Ross, Edward IV, 197. 
23 Ibid., 385. 
24 Ibid., 197?8. 
25 Ibid., 198. 
26 Malcolm Vale, ?An Anglo-Burgundian Nobleman and Art Patron: Louis de Bruges, 
Lord of la Gruthuyse and Earl of Winchester,? in England and the Low Countries in the Late 
Middle Ages, eds. Caroline Barron and Nigel Saul (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1995), 118. 
According to Vale (p. 122), the most concentrated time Edward spent in Bruges was from 
January 13 to February 19, 1471.  
             8 
master of the ship that had delivered them.27 But Gruuthuse would also prove to have a 
significant influence on Edward?s intellectual development,28 and his Bruges palace was 
physically connected to Our Lady?s Collegiate Church, which had one of the most lavish musical 
programs in the city.29 
 
Music and Liturgy in Edward?s Life 
There are sources from before, during and after Edward?s exile that suggest the importance to the 
king of public ritual and liturgical music. Edward?s personal patronage of religion is described as 
?sparse? by Ross,30 but even in the fractious years of his early reign, the king still found the 
resources necessary to produce lavish ceremonies with extravagant musical provision. One such 
example is the churching of his wife Elizabeth in 1466, 31 which featured a choir of forty-two, 
plus strings, trumpets and pipes.32 
While there are no accounts of Edward attending sung mass during his exile, he did have 
pre-existing connections to at least two Bruges churches, one of which links him to its 
polyphonic music. The first was to the private chapel of the aforementioned Merchant 
Adventurers, to which Edward had given an endowment in 1462.33 The Bruges branch of the 
Merchant Adventurers, whose number included William Caxton, had their chapel within the 
 
27 Charles Ross, Richard III (New Haven: Yale University Press 2011), 19. 
28 Ross, Edward IV, 321. 
29 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 42?3. 
30 Ross, Edward IV, 333. 
31 This was a service of thanksgiving after a woman had given birth. 
32 Malcolm Letts, ed. and trans., The Travels of Leo of Rozmital (Cambridge: Hakluyt 
Society, 1957), 46?7. 
33 Maximiliaan P. J. Martens, ?Artistic Patronage in Bruges Institutions, ca. 1440?1482? 
(PhD diss., University of California Santa Barbara, 1992), 324. 
             9 
Carmelite convent, and Edward?s 1462 privilege granted them permission to spend funds 
collected from forfeitures and confiscations on the maintenance of their chapel.34 The merchants? 
costs included paying for the singing of the Carmelite Friars, who performed polyphonic music 
in their chapel by at least 1456. The second was to the Church of Our Lady, which was adjacent 
to the Gruuthuse Palace where Edward stayed. Here, the king?s coat of arms was displayed after 
a full set had been commissioned, one for each of the Knights of the Order of the Golden 
Fleece,35 following the Order?s meeting held there in 1468.36  
Two public events with processions, an apparition and a mass, are described in Historie 
of the Arrivall of Edward IV, the anonymous Yorkist account of the king?s triumphant campaign 
to reclaim the English crown in 1471, immediately after his exile. The first relates a minor 
miracle that occurred at a church in Daventry, where a concealed image of St.  Anne apparently 
opened, untouched, in the king?s presence. In recounting this, the chronicler describes how 
Edward, 
?with great devotion, heard all divine service upon the morning, Palm Sunday, in the 
parish church? the King went in procession? and, when the procession had come into 
the church? drawn up before the cross, that all the people shall honor the cross, with the 
anthem, Ave, three times undertaken.? 37 
In a similar vein, the chronicle relates how at the conclusion of the 1471 campaign, 
Edward?s conclusive victory at the Battle of Tewkesbury was marked by a dramatic liturgy in the 
town?s Abbey church: 
?? with God?s might achieved, the King took the right way to the abbey there, to give 
unto Almighty God laud and thanks for the victory? where he was received with 
 
34 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 63?4. 
35 A Burgundian chivalric order founded by Duke Philip the Good. 
36 Martens, ?Artistic Patronage in Bruges Institutions, ca. 1440?1482,? 214. 
37 John Bruce, ed., Historie of the Arrivall of Edward IV in England and the Finall 
Recouerye of His Kingdomes from Henry VI A.D. M.CCCC.?LXXI (London: Camden Society, 
1838), 13. Text modernized by Patrick Allies. 
             10 
procession, and so conveyed through the church, and the quire, to the high altar, with 
great devotion praising God??38 
 
We also know that music played a role in perhaps the most dramatic public liturgy of 
Edward?s reign. In 1476, in an act of dynastic piety, Edward decided to exhume the bodies of his 
father and younger brother, which lay in modest graves close to where they had perished at the 
Battle of Wakefield and re-inter them in a family vault at Fotheringhay Collegiate Church. An 
eyewitness account provides a description of the extravagant ceremony, and also gives an 
indication of the way in which Edward chose to observe sung mass: 
?The procession moved into the church where two hearses were waiting, one in the choir 
for the body of the Duke and one in the Lady Chapel39 for that of the Earl of Rutland, and 
after the King had retired to his ?closet? [a small private or semi-private space for prayer] 
and the princes and officers of arms had stationed themselves around the hearses, masses 
were sung... The next day three masses were sung, the Bishop of Lincoln preached a 
?very noble sermon? and offerings were made...?40 
 
 
This mention of Edward retiring to his closet before the masses were sung corresponds 
with another piece of information which suggests that Edward at times desired to hear mass in a 
discreet way. In 1479 the king received a license from Pope Sixtus IV that allowed him and his 
queen to attend services at Sheen Priory in a chapel that was separate from the monastic choir.41 
There is a likely connection here with the issues of privacy which emerge in Edward IV?s Black 
Book of the Household and other ordinances. Here there is a new focus, in terms of royal 
 
38 Bruce, Historie of the Arrivall of Edward IV, 30. Text modernized by Patrick Allies. 
39 A chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary. 
40 Cora L. Scofield, The Life and Reign of Edward the Fourth (London: Longman, Green 
and Co., 1923), 2:166. 
41 Ross, Edward IV, 333. 
             11 
household policy, on a series of smaller rooms that protected the king?s personal space.42 This 
idea of Edward choosing to worship ? and, arguably, to listen ? in this private, distanced way, is 
one I will return to in Chapter Three. 
Finally, the description of liturgical music in Edward?s life that is of most significance is 
one which provides a connection to both the king?s exile and his relationship with Louis de 
Gruuthuse, his host. In a show of gratitude for Gruthuuse?s hospitality, in September of 1472 
Edward bestowed on Gruuthuse the unusual honor, for a non-Englishman, the title of earl of 
Winchester.43 A herald recorded Gruuthuse?s trip to England to receive it and gives details of an 
elaborate ceremony at Westminster Abbey. But the account also notes that the king and 
Gruuthuse, while staying at Windsor, went to hear Lady mass,44 which was ?melodiously sung? 
in the King?s own chapel.45 The musical aspects of the relationship between Edward and 
Gruuthuse are further explored in Chapter Two. 
  It is intriguing that Windsor should be the location for Gruuthuse to hear Lady mass with 
Edward, because this was the site of the dramatic project that the king would begin almost 
immediately afterwards that would involve the construction of a new church and the 
establishment of an enlarged choir, mentioned earlier, to sing there. In February 1473, Edward 
 
42 Fiona Kisby, ?The Early-Tudor Royal Household Chapel, 1485?1547? (PhD Diss., 
University of London, 1996), 37. 
43 Frederic Madden, ?Narratives of the Arrival of Louis De Bruges, Seigneur De La 
Gruthuyse, in England, and of his Creation as Earl of Winchester, in 1472: Communicated in a 
Letter from Sir Frederic Madden to Hudson Gurney, Esq. Vice-President,? Archaeologia 26 
(1836): 265?86. 
44 A votive mass in honor of the Virgin Mary, with its own liturgy. During the period in 
question, it would often have included a sung polyphonic mass ordinary. See: Barbara Haggh, 
?Votive ritual,? Grove Music Online, ed. Deane Root, accessed April 19, 2021, https://www-
oxfordmusiconline-com. 
45 C. Lethbridge Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century 
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), 386?8. 
             12 
appointed the Bishop of Salisbury, Richard Beauchamp, as ?master and surveyor of the King?s 
works? at St. George?s Chapel.46 Beauchamp was given free rein to demolish the earlier 
buildings on the site, including the removal of the earlier chapel, so that a substantial 
replacement could be constructed. In the same period, Edward gradually increased the number of 
choristers and lay clerks, siphoning money from St. Anthony?s Hospital in London in order to 
pay for this.47 
 
Inspirations for Edward?s New Choir at Windsor 
There are possible explanations as to why the king would have matched the new church with a 
striking increase in the number of singers. The construction project was clearly of importance to 
Edward as the church would be the home of the Order of the Garter, his chivalric order, and 
therefore a site of great prestige. And while the building would not be completed within 
Edward?s lifetime, he saw it as his planned final resting place, insisting that a chantry chapel, a 
small chapel set aside for specific chantry duties which commonly included mass or prayers for a 
deceased person or persons, be included that would house his own tomb.48 In light of this, it is 
perhaps not surprising that the king installed a new, vastly enlarged choir to sing in the chapel.49  
Edward?s decision to employ this new, larger choral ensemble can also be described as an 
example of what Vincenzo Borghetti and others have called the ?representation of princely 
 
46 Tim Tatton-Brown, ?The Constructional Sequence and Topography of St.  George?s 
Chapel Windsor,? in St.  George?s Chapel, Windsor, in the Late Middle Ages, eds. Colin 
Richmond and Eileen Scarff (Leeds: Maney, 2001), 5?6. 
47 Bowers, ?The Music and Musical Establishment of St.  George?s Chapel,? 199?201. 
48 Tatton-Brown, ?The Constructional Sequence and Topography,? 9. 
49 Bowers, ?The Music and Musical Establishment of St.  George?s Chapel,? 191. 
             13 
power.?50 Borghetti argues that over the course of the fifteenth century, European court 
chapels?the clergy and singers responsible for performing liturgical services at court?became 
centered on music: in his words, ?polyphonic music? became a luxury good, a display 
object.?51 This may well have been the case at Windsor, where perhaps Edward saw an 
opportunity to project impressive grandeur in a way that Henry VI had failed to do.52 Certainly, 
we know that English musicians were already highly regarded by his fellow princes across 
Europe: Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza wrote to Edward in October 1471, informing him that he 
had dispatched two choir recruiters to England in order to find new members for his own chapel 
choir.53 
  It is also important to acknowledge that in the second period of his reign, the economic 
situation allowed Edward to make these reforms. As Ross puts it, ?after 1471, and still more after 
1475, security at home, increased leisure, and above all the possession of ample funds, enabled 
Edward to indulge his leanings towards magnificence on a far greater scale than before.?54 This 
was significant, as due to the preceding recession, St. George?s Windsor was suffering 
financially. Edward was able to give the college what A.K.B. Evans describes as ?[an] 
endowment so massive that it could surmount the difficulties of reduced rents and long-standing 
arrears.?55 
 
50 Vincenzo Borghetti, ?Music and the Representation of Princely Power in the Fifteenth 
and Sixteenth Century,? Acta Musicologica 80, no. 2 (2008): 179?214. 
51 Borghetti, ?Music and the Representation of Princely Power,? 193?4. 
52 Myers, The Household of Edward IV, 5. 
53 Evelyn S. Welch, ?Sight, Sound and Ceremony in the Chapel of Galeazzo Maria 
Sforza,? Early Music History 12 (1993): 166. 
54 Ross, Edward IV, 330. 
55 A.K.B. Evans, ?The Years of Arrears: Financial Problems of the College of St.  George 
in the Fifteenth Century,? in St.  George?s Chapel, Windsor, in the Late Middle Ages, eds. Colin 
Richmond and Eileen Scarff (Leeds: Maney, 2001), 104. 
             14 
  Despite these possible explanations for Edward?s newly enlarged ensemble, the impetus 
for this decision and for the precise details of the way in which it was carried out have not fully 
been investigated. Therefore, an examination of Edward?s time abroad may be useful. I will not 
seek to prove linear causality between Edward?s experiences during his Burgundian exile and 
what came next in terms of his musical patronage. Instead, I want to examine the likely 
encounters of this time abroad to help explain why, given almost limitless possibilities, the king 
chose to go about these musical reforms in the manner that he did. 
  The musical possibilities of Edward?s time in exile have been overlooked,56 yet given the 
importance of music and liturgy in Edward?s life, and the reforms of English choirs that 
subsequently took place, it seems appropriate to consider what Edward may have experienced 
while abroad. Most of all it is the high status of the liturgical music of Bruges and Burgundy in 
this period, and the ubiquity of polyphonic performance, that makes this period worth studying. 
In Strohm?s estimation, ?the performances of mensural polyphony in the churches of late 
fifteenth-century Bruges must have averaged three to four per day.?57 In this study I will examine 
what Edward may have heard of these performances, how he listened to them, and suggest the 
possible impact of this on English musical culture in the late fifteenth century. 
 
  
 
56 I have not found any references to the possible significance of music during Edward?s 
exile. 
57 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 11. 
             15 
Figure 2: Map of The Burgundian Territories Under Charles the Bold, 1465/67?1477 
 
 
 
Image used under a Creative Commons License (Credit: Marco Zanoli)
             16 
Chapter Two 
Louis de Gruuthuse: Royal Host and Music Patron 
 
Introduction  
The influence of the Burgundian nobleman, Louis de Gruuthuse, on Edward IV?s development 
as an intellectual and as a cultural patron has long been recognized. Particular attention has been 
given to Gruuthuse?s contribution to the king?s development in the areas of book-collecting, 
architecture and diplomacy.1 The account of the king and Gruuthuse attending Lady mass in the 
King?s own chapel at Windsor,  ?melodiously sung,? hints that their musical relationship should 
also be considered, however.2 We know that Gruuthuse had musical and liturgical interests: he 
was a patron of the music at Our Lady?s Collegiate Church in Bruges, which neighbored his 
palace; he built an oratory3 overlooking the choir of same church, which is still intact, and which 
he used to attend sung masses; and he was a member of confraternities4 that sponsored 
polyphonic performances. I will outline Gruuthuse?s role as royal host, detail his musical 
involvement in Bruges, and make connections with Edward?s patronage of polyphonic music. I 
will examine both the music to which the king and the Burgundian nobleman gave financial 
support, and the way in which they listened to it. 
 
1 The most substantial work on Gruuthuse to date is Maximiliaan P. J. Martens, ed., 
Lodewijk van Gruuthuse, Maecenas en Europees diplomaat, (Bruges: Stichting Kunstboek, 
1992). Studies in English that refer to Gruuthuse?s influence on Edward include: Malcolm Vale, 
?An Anglo-Burgundian Nobleman and Art Patron: Louis de Bruges, Lord of la Gruthuyse and 
Earl of Winchester,? in England and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages, eds. Caroline 
Barron and Nigel Saul (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1995) on architecture, M.H.A. Ballard, 
?Anglo-Burgundian Relations, 1464?1472? (PhD diss., Oxford University, 1992) on diplomacy, 
and Margaret Kekewich, ?Edward IV, William Caxton, and Literary Patronage in Yorkist 
England,? The Modern Language Review 66, no. 3 (1971): 481?7 on book-collecting. 
2 Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century, 386?8. 
3 A private chapel. 
4 Confraternities were lay brotherhoods, usually with a religious purpose. 
             17 
Edward?s Arrival into Gruuthuse?s Hospitality 
Gruuthuse, while a noted bibliophile and a music patron, was first and foremost an experienced 
and powerful courtier. Having served Duke Philip the Good successfully in his war with Ghent 
in the 1450s,5 Gruuthuse became part of the duke?s inner circle, and was made a knight of the 
Order of the Golden Fleece in 1461.6 Gruuthuse also became an advisor to Philip?s son and heir 
Charles (who became Duke Charles the Bold), which gave him a connection to the House of 
York via Charles? wife Margaret, sister of Edward IV.7 Gruuthuse may also have been known to 
the Yorkists due to his trips to England on behalf of Philip in 1461 and 1466.8 By the time of 
Edward?s exile, Gruuthuse was serving as Governor of Holland, a demanding post9 which 
signified his political status.10 The nobleman was in his early forties, wealthy, and important.  
Edward landed at Texel near Alkmaar in October 1470 where he was met by 
Gruuthuse.11 Malcolm Vale points out that the location of Edward?s landing was fortuitous, 
rather than by design,12 but the outcome was that Gruuthuse hosted the king for more of his exile 
than anyone else.13 While Edward was now in the territory of his brother-in-law Duke Charles 
the Bold, the duke was in a difficult position as Edward was no longer king, and any sign of 
 
5 Rebecca Dixon, ?Enigma as Display in the Fifteenth-Century Chastellain De Coucy: 
Veiled Performances,? Speculum 88, no. 1 (2013): 216. 
6 Vale, ?An Anglo-Burgundian Nobleman and Art Patron,? 118. 
7 Ross, Edward IV, 198?9. 
8 Vale, ?An Anglo-Burgundian Nobleman and Art Patron,? 118. 
9 Ibid., 118. 
10 Wim De Clercq, Jan Dumolyn, and Jelle Haemers, ?Vivre Noblement?: Material 
Culture and Elite Identity in Late Medieval Flanders,? The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 
38, no. 1 (2007): 26. 
11 Ross, Edward IV, 198?9. 
12 Vale, ?An Anglo-Burgundian Nobleman and Art Patron,? 118. 
13 Ibid., 119. 
             18 
support for Edward could be interpreted as an act of war.14 In due course, Edward did spend 
some time at the Duke?s court, and this will be addressed later. But from his October arrival until 
Christmas, and for some of January and February, the deposed monarch was dependent on 
Gruuthuse?s hospitality, and a considerable amount of this time was spent at the nobleman?s 
palace in Bruges.15  
Edward?s gratitude for the welcome he received in Bruges is shown by his subsequent 
appointment of Gruuthuse as earl of Winchester in October 1472, and also in the warmth of the 
letter the king sent to the citizens of Bruges in May 1471, after he had retaken the English 
throne: ?Tres chiers et esp?ciauls amys, nous vous merchions tant et si cordiallement que faire 
povons de la bonne chier et grande courtoises?? (Very dear and special friends, we thank you 
so much and so cordially for what what you have done in the way of good deeds and great 
courtesy?).16 
 
Gruuthuse as Literary and Musical Book Collector 
In the 1470s, the Gruuthuse residence in Bruges was a substantial and impressive residence.17 
One of its most remarkable elements would have been the section of Louis de Gruuthuse?s 
personal library that was held there.18 Ross describes the library as one of the finest in Europe,19 
 
14 Ross, Edward IV, 203?4. 
15 Martens (Lodewijk van Gruuthuse, 25) gives the dates of Edward?s stay in Bruges as 
January 13 to February 19. As Charles the Bold?s itinerary records that the king could be found 
at Hesdin Castle until the end of January, it seems his location was not fixed. 
16 Louis Gilliodts-Van Severen, Inventaire des archives de la ville de Bruges, VI (Bruges: 
Gaillard, 1876), 62. Translation by Patrick Allies. 
17 De Clercq, Dumolyn, and Haemers call it ?pompous.? 
18 Items were also stored at the Hague and Oostkamp, according to Vale, ?An Anglo-
Burgundian Nobleman,? 118. 
19 Ross, Edward IV, 320?21. 
             19 
while Jongenelen and Parsons refer to Gruuthuse as ?one of the most remarkable book-collectors 
of the Middle Ages.?20 Gruuthuse?s collection signified his great wealth as well as his 
bibliophilia. At this time, the cost of a single book was equivalent to that of a townhouse, so 
Gruuthuse?s collection of 160 manuscripts was worth as much as an entire village.21 
Music manuscripts were featured in Gruuthuse?s collection. The most significant musical 
item was the Gruuthuse Songbook,22 which consisted of three different booklets from the late 
fourteenth century that had been combined into one book in around 1462.23 The volume is 
largely devoted to poetry ? it is significant, because it holds the earliest Dutch poems to have 
musical notation provided.24 In an additional demonstration of his interest in music, Gruuthuse 
also owned the complete motets of Guillaume de Machaut, which filled five-hundred pages.25 
There does seem to be a relationship between Gruuthuse?s bibliophilia and Edward?s 
subsequent acquisition of manuscripts. As Ross describes, ?Edward began the systematic 
purchasing of expensive Flemish illuminated manuscripts soon after his return to England in 
1471.?26 Certainly, by his death in 1483, Edward owned similar versions of almost half of the 
 
20 Bas Jongenelen and Ben Parsons, ?Ten Poems from the ?Gruuthuse Songbook? 
(c.1462),? Fifteenth Century Studies 34 (2009): 93. 
21 Jongenelen and Parsons, ?Ten Poems,? 94, quoting Jozef Janssens, ?Inleiding,? in 
?Egidius waer bestu bleven?: Liederen uit het GruuthuseManuscript, eds. Jozef Janssens, V. 
Uyttersprot, and L. Dewachter (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 1992), 10. 
22 Herman Brinkman and Ike de Loos, eds., Het Gruuthuse-handschrift (Hs. Den Haag, 
Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 79 K 10) (Hilversum: Verloren, 2015). 
23 Ibid., 94. 
24 Ibid., 95. 
25 Ibid., 96. On the contents of the library, the authors cite Jan Deschamps and Joris 
Reynaert, ?Gruuthuse-Handschrift,? in De Nederlandse en Vlaamse auteurs van middeleeuwen 
tot hedem met inbegrif van de Friese auteurs, ed. Gerrit Jan van Bork and P. J. Verkruijsse 
(Weesp: De Haan, 1985), 237?8. 
26 Ross, Edward IV, 321. 
             20 
volumes that were in Gruuthuse?s library.27 There is also at least one example of a book in the 
king?s collection that bore the Gruuthuse heraldic emblem and motto, which Kekewich suggests 
was a gift from the Burgundian nobleman to Edward.28 Vale acknowledges the doubt Scot 
Mackendrick has cast over one of the books previously thought to have shown a link between 
Edward and Gruuthuse?s collections, but still concludes that there was a direct connection 
between the Burgundian?s commissioning and purchasing of manuscripts and the king?s own 
library.29 
 
The Gruuthuse Oratory 
The influence of Gruuthuse on Edward can also be observed in their respective architectural 
projects. As early as 1468,30 Gruuthuse began building an annex that connected his residence to 
the neighboring Collegiate Church of Our Lady.31 His access to the church came in the form of a 
small wood-paneled oratory, looking out into the southeast corner of the ambulatory (see Figures 
4 and 5). Gruuthuse received permission from the chapter early in 1472 to build the lower part of 
the oratory in stone, perhaps replacing a slightly older wooden structure.32 The letter establishing 
permission for the oratory makes references to the gifts Gruuthuse had already bestowed on the 
 
27 Kekewich, ?Edward IV, William Caxton,? 482. 
28 Ibid., 482?3. 
29 Vale, ?An Anglo-Burgundian Nobleman,? 119?21. 
30 Jan Dumolyn, Marc Ryckaert, Heidi Deneweth, Luc Devliegher, and Guy Dupont, 
?The Urban Landscape II: c.1275?c.1500,? in Medieval Bruges: c. 850?1550, eds. Andrew 
Brown and Jan Dumolyn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 184, citing L. 
Devliegher, ?De bidkapel van Gruuthuse te Brugge,? Gentse Bijdragen tot de Kunstgeschiedenis 
en Oudheidkunde, 17 (1957?8): 69?74. 
31 Jeanne Nuechterlein, ?The Domesticity of Sacred Space in the Fifteenth-Century 
Netherlands,? in Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. 
Andrew Spicer and Sarah Hamilton (Aldershot?Burlington: Ashgate, 2005). 
32 Nuechterlein, ?The Domesticity of Sacred Space,? 69. 
             21 
Church of Our Lady. Among these, one could conceivably refer to music-making: a gift of two 
richly decorated ?choir batons? (choorstaven), inscribed with the Gruuthuse coat of arms.33 
These could perhaps be choirbook pointers of the sort seen in some depictions from this period, 
such as the woodcut from Gregor Reisch?s Margarita Philosophica (see Figure 3). Here, the 
third figure from the right holds a choirbook pointer in their left hand. 
 
 
Figure 3: Woodcut from Gregor Reisch?s ?Margarita philosophica? (1503). 
Image reproduced from the Bavarian State Library under a Creative Commons License. 
 
  
 
33 Martens, ?Artistic Patronage in Bruges Institutions, ca. 1440?1482,? 530. 
             22 
Jeanne Nuechterlein has argued that Gruuthuse?s oratory is part of a tradition of wealthy 
patrons seeking private access to worship that extends back at least as far as Charlemagne?s 
ninth-century Palatine chapel at Aachen. According to Nuechterlein, these chapels provided ?an 
immediate link between the secular home and sacred realm? [they] gave the household family a 
private place to worship, but they also typically foregrounded their social superiority.?34 The 
inference here is that the value in the oratory was that it enabled the Gruuthuse family and their 
guests to be present and acknowledged but not in view of ordinary worshippers. Vale notes that 
there was also a precedent for connecting the home to a sacred space in the Bruges church of St.  
Donatian?s, which was connected via a transitus35 to the comital house of the Counts of 
Flanders.36 This had an unfortunate local association, however, as it had been the scene of 
Charles the Good?s murder in 1127, in his own oratory. 
The Gruuthuse oratory suggests that the nobleman cared about the way he experienced 
liturgy, to the extent that he was prepared to take on this major building project. Nuechterlein 
argues that the design of the chapel allowed Gruuthuse and his family to observe what was 
happening at the high altar, a privilege normally denied to the laity.37 This may well have been a 
key motivation, but it is also worth considering what the Gruuthuse family would have been able 
to hear from their private space. As Malcolm Vale puts it: ?the excellent musical resources of 
Our Lady at Bruges, patronised by the Gruuthuse family, could be appreciated from this vantage 
point.?38   
 
34 Nuechterlein, ?The Domesticity of Sacred Space,? 69. 
35 A passageway. 
36 Vale, ?An Anglo-Burgundian Nobleman,? 122. 
37 Nuechterlein, ?The Domesticity of Sacred Space,? 69?70. 
38 Vale, ?An Anglo-Burgundian Nobleman,? 122. 
             23 
Of course, there is no evidence that Edward experienced the full effect of the Gruuthuse 
oratory ? he had reclaimed the English throne by the time it was completed in stone. But the 
letter establishing permission for the oratory, dating from January 7, 1472, mentions that it is 
already under construction, so one might assume that the plans for the structure existed by the 
time of Edward?s departure in March 1471, and could at least have been a topic for discussion.39 
Certainly, by the time of Gruuthuse?s trip to Windsor in 1472, the building of his oratory would 
have been well underway. And at Windsor, Edward created a similar space in the new chapel he 
built at St.  George?s, where work began in 1473. In the new church at Windsor, the king insisted 
a ?chapell or a closet? be constructed, also in a raised position and in the north-east area of the 
church (see Figure 6).40 According to Vale it is too simplistic to argue that Edward?s oratory is a 
?direct product? of his stay in Bruges, but asks if Edward had not visited Gruuthuse, would the 
structure ?have taken the form that it did??41 More recently, Jan Dumolyn has used bolder 
language, describing Edward IV?s chapel as a ?copy.?42  
 
Music Patronage at The Collegiate Church of Our Lady 
As Edward?s stay in Bruges was spent adjacent to the Church of Our Lady, this seems an 
obvious place to consider first as a possible musical influence. This was one of the city?s two 
major churches, and by the 1470s it had a rich schedule of sung liturgies that regularly included 
polyphony. In the fifteenth century, the Church of Our Lady had acquired an impressive 
 
39 Martens, ?Artistic Patronage in Bruges Institutions, ca. 1440?1482,? 528. 
40 Tatton-Brown, ?The Constructional Sequence and Topography of St.  George?s Chapel 
Windsor,? 7?9. 
41 Vale, ?An Anglo-Burgundian Nobleman,? 125?6 and 118. 
42 Dumolyn et al, ?The Urban Landscape II: c.1275?c.1500,? 184. 
             24 
collection of music books, and employed a large staff including at least fourteen clerici installati 
or lay clerks. From 1429, one of their responsibilities would have been a sung Lady mass every 
Saturday, for which the original financial support came from Louis de Gruuthuse?s parents. The 
clerici installati were also joined on occasion by a substantial number of schoolboys.43 Their 
presence was often required at services for which there was a particular endowment.44 One 
example of this, paid for by Louis de Gruuthuse and his wife Anne van Borssele, dates from 
February 1473.45 This provided for four annual Requiems and vigils with nine lessons each, with 
four boys required to sing the masses, and eighteen boys to sing the lessons. 
 
The Music Patronage of Confraternities 
Confraternities were a major part of the liturgical scene in Bruges in the 1470s, and their 
endowments often provide evidence for the singing of polyphonic music. At the Church of Our 
Lady there was a significant increase of these arrangements in the second half of the fifteenth 
century.46 For example, in the early 1470s, the Colaerd brothers and Peter de La Bie, all 
members of a wealthy money-lending family, funded motets and vespers47 processions for three 
saints? days, and in 1474 this arrangement was formalized as the centerpiece of a new 
confraternity. 
 
43 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 43. Strohm notes that there was no distinction 
made here between schoolboys and choirboys until c.1480. 
44 A perpetual income set aside for a specific purpose at a church; established by an 
individual or a confraternity.  
45 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 45. 
46 Ibid., 46?7. 
47 An early evening worship service of the office. 
             25 
Gruuthuse was a member of the confraternity dedicated to Our Lady of the Dry Tree.48 
This was an exclusive confraternity, but one whose membership included numerous foreign 
dignitaries and merchants, as well ducal singers such as Adrien Basin and Jean Cordier.49 The 
confraternity?s name relates to the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, and the 
organization offered its wealthy members opportunities to demonstrate their devotion.50 Its 
services were hosted by the Friars Minor in their chapel close to the center of Bruges. The 
musical life of the Dry Tree confraternity was rich: their contract with the friary required a sung 
mass on Sundays and Marian feasts.51 These services were not open to the public, but the 
confraternity did allow both male and female members to attend together until 1508.52 While in 
the early years of the confraternity, the masses were sung by the friars, it soon began a policy of 
hiring outside singers.53 In 1449 there was a tense episode where a group of twelve or thirteen 
skilled singers defected from their duties at St.  Donatian?s church in order to sing for the more 
lucrative Dry Tree mass and were subsequently punished. Although accounts do not survive 
from before 1496, we do know that by then the confraternity was spending the substantial annual 
sum of ?78 on its singers and organists.54 
 
48 Jongenelen and Parsons, ?Ten Poems,? 96. 
49 Andrew Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion in Medieval Bruges c.1300?1520 
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 156 and Strohm, Music in Late Medieval 
Bruges, 70?2. 
50 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 71. 
51 Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion, 158. 
52 Ibid., 302. 
53 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 71. 
54 Ibid., 71?2. 
             26 
Chief among the Bruges confraternities from a musical point of view was one dedicated 
to ?Our Lady of the Snow.?55 This fraternity had a large membership which peaked at around 
1,300 in the 1470s. Its number included those from the very top of society: Charles the Bold 
joined in 1469, soon followed by a number of his courtiers, including Louis de Gruuthuse.56 In 
1470 the duke?s devotion to the confraternity was noted by the provost, the officer responsible 
for property owned by the church, and in January 1471 the duke made an offering at mass in 
front of the confraternity?s altar.57 On Sunday April 5, 1472 we know that he was present for one 
of its masses at the Church of Our Lady.58 Intriguingly, we know that the duke did not attend at 
the Our Lady of Snow altar, but witnessed proceedings from the Gruuthuse oratory above. It may 
not be a coincidence that it was the north-east corner of the church, where the oratory was 
located, that was chosen as the location for the confraternity?s new, enlarged chapel, that was 
being planned by March 1473.59 
Edward would not have been present for the confraternity of Our Lady of Snow?s feast 
day on August 5. But he would have been able to witness an important new musical tradition 
which had only begun in 1468.60 This was a lof or Salve,61 in effect by this time a devotional 
concert, which was to be sung by the succentor62 and the boys after vespers on all Sundays and 
 
55 Ibid., 47. 
56 Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion, 160. 
57 Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion, 250. 
58 Andrew Brown, ?Bruges and the Burgundian ?Theatre-State?: Charles the Bold and 
Our Lady of the Snow,? History 84, no. 276 (1999): 574. 
59 Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion, 159. 
60 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 48. 
61 Lof is the Dutch word for praise. The Salve is so-called because the service includes the 
singing of the antiphon for the Virgin Mary, Salve regina. 
62 The person responsible for overseeing the work of the lay clerks and, where applicable, 
the boy choristers. 
             27 
Marian feasts, with organ.63 On these occasions, the succentor usually hired two or three extra 
singers from the socii de musica of St. Donatian?s Church.64 For these performances, the 
performers would have been able to draw on the confraternity?s growing library of polyphonic 
music. Strohm estimates that in the 1470s they were investing ?40 in this collection per year.65 
 
Conclusion 
While we cannot be sure of exactly what Edward would have experienced by way of liturgy and 
music as Louis de Gruuthuse?s guest in Bruges, we can account for many of the possibilities. It 
would have been difficult for him to avoid hearing Lady mass sung by the lay clerks of the 
Church of Our Lady, and it would certainly explain why Edward took Gruuthuse to hear Lady 
mass at Windsor in 1472. As Edward?s time in Bruges coincided with a high point for the 
confraternity of Our Lady of Snows in terms of its social importance and musical spending, it 
seems almost inevitable that Edward would have sampled its new concert-like events, with music 
performed by the confraternity?s singers. In a sense, Edward would have felt most at ease with 
the Dry Tree confraternity, whose international membership included the Englishman William 
Bray.66 
Of course, it is possible that Gruuthuse learned as much about musical matters from 
Edward as the Englishman did from his host. But the range of new experiences Edward would 
 
63 According to Reinhard Strohm, The Rise of European Music, 1380?1500 (Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 307, this practice led to public concerts in Bruges involving 
the civic wind band from 1483. These were offered in praise of Our Lady, but not part of a 
service. 
64 Details of this liturgy are given and discussed in Robert Nosow, Ritual Meanings in the 
Fifteenth-Century Motet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 128-34. 
65 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 48. 
66 Ibid., 72. 
             28 
have had must have made some impression. Even if Edward only took in some liturgical and 
para-liturgical events during his time with Gruuthuse, he would have encountered a rich array of 
polyphonic music performed by professional singers.  
By February of 1471, the English king clearly felt comfortable enough in Bruges to walk 
through the city, rather than ride on horseback. A contemporary chronicle relates how the 
citizens, full of wonder and delight, joined the king as he walked to the Spey gate to board a 
boat.67 So, perhaps he would also have been prepared to attend public worship or devotional 
concerts. On the other hand, by the time of Edward?s visit, his host Louis de Gruuthuse was on 
the verge of building an entirely private space in which to worship, watch and listen. Perhaps this 
was, to some extent, a new idea to Edward. It may even have appealed to him as a new way for 
him to demonstrate power or even to improve his personal security, once he had reclaimed his 
throne. 
The musical elements of the relationship between Edward and Gruuthuse are difficult to 
disentangle from those involving book-collecting, architecture, and diplomacy. If Edward 
encountered and was influenced by Gruuthuse?s book collection, it is entirely possible that he 
was aware of its significant polyphonic musical items. And if Edward and Gruuthuse shared with 
each other their architectural plans for upper-level oratories, then one factor may well have been 
the polyphonic masses they planned to observe from these positions. Gruuthuse?s 1472 trip to 
England involved hearing a melodious Lady mass, but it also allowed Edward to build on his 
relationship with one of Charles the Bold?s senior courtiers who would go on to support English 
interests in future,68 thereby combining liturgical music with international diplomacy. 
 
 
67 Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion, 232. 
68 Vale, ?An Anglo-Burgundian Nobleman,? 128. 
             29 
Figure 4: Gruuthuse Oratory exterior, Our Lady?s Collegiate Church, Bruges 
 
  
 
? Sanne Maekelberg 2018 (used with permission) 
 
 
 
             30 
Figure 5: Gruuthuse Oratory interior, Our Lady?s Collegiate Church, Bruges 
 
? Musea Brugge (used with permission) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
             31 
Figure 6: Edward IV Chantry (the left of the two windows that overlook the main chapel), St. 
George?s Collegiate Church, Windsor 
 
? David Herraez (used under license from Dreamstime.com) 
 
  
             32 
Chapter Three 
Late-Medieval Listening from the Oratory 
 
There was a synchrony between Louis de Gruuthuse and Edward IV?s upper-level oratories and 
musical developments in the spaces which they overlooked. Gruuthuse?s oratory at Our Lady?s 
Collegiate Church was built within four years of the establishing of polyphonic singing for the 
?lof? and at confraternity masses, while Edward?s equivalent structure at Windsor was 
assembled at the same time as his choir significantly increased in size. I suggest these are just 
two of the multiple examples in England and Burgundian territory in the late-medieval period, 
where similar spaces were constructed by patrons with links to music. While acknowledging the 
other benefits of oratories built in wood or stone such as prestige, privacy, sightlines to altars, 
and visual aesthetics, I will make the case for possible musical and acoustical motivations for 
their construction.  
 
Burgundian Music Patrons and Their Oratories 
The importance of the way senior figures in Burgundy attended mass is shown by the special 
permission granted to the dukes of Burgundy in 1468 (held until 1491) relating to the masses of 
the Order of the Golden Fleece. This allowed the dukes to attend the order?s Marian Mass and 
Mass of the Holy Ghost in an oratory next to the altar.1 This arrangement is depicted in an image 
from a Book of Hours, reproduced in Figure 7, which shows Philip the Good at prayer, wearing 
the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece.2 The duke is positioned under a cloth canopy, on the 
floor level of a church or chapel.  
 
1 Barbara Haggh, ?The Archives of the Order of the Golden Fleece and Music,? Journal 
of the Royal Musical Association 120, no. 1 (1995): 9. 
2 Haggh, ?The Archives of the Order,? 9, writes that as Philip wears a collar of the Order 
and is in his private oratory, he must be at a Marian Mass or a Mass of the Holy Ghost at a 
             33 
Figure 7: Philip the Good at Prayer, attrib. Jean Le Tavernier, in Le Trait? sur l?Oraison 
Dominicale, after 1457, Brussels, Biblioth?que Royale de Belgique, ms. 9092, fol. 9r. 
 
[REDACTED IMAGE] 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The liturgical ?moment? that is depicted, possibly the elevation of the bread and wine, is quite 
similar to that in the image referred to and reproduced in Chapter 4 from La Fleur des Histoires, 
in that the clergy are facing the altar, and the choir appear to be singing. In the illustration above, 
a steward is pulling back the covering of the canopy, while in the miniature from the La Fleur 
des Histoires, the curtain is tied back. Both arrangements would seem to increase the audibility 
 
meeting of the Order of the Golden Fleece. She now explains that this was a court mass, because 
no bishop was celebrating, and that Philip would have worn his collar of the Order at any formal 
mass. 
             34 
of the singing group ? although they could also be choices made by the artist to provide a 
suitable composition.  
A second practice, which is the focus of this chapter, involved the duke observing mass 
from the vantage point of a room that overlooked the chapel. This would have been an oratory in 
the sense of a small chapel, like those built by Edward and Gruuthuse. There was an example of 
this type of construction within the Burgundian palace in Bruges known as the ?Prince?s Court.?3 
Here the chapel complex underwent a thorough renovation from 1456 to 1459, directed by 
Isabella of Portugal, wife of Philip the Good.4 Although now lost, we know that an oratory of 
some sort existed here as it is described in one of the accounts of Charles the Bold?s wedding 
celebrations.5 A recent digital reconstruction of the palace proposed that the chapel and its altar 
could be viewed from a raised oratory. The authors, Sanne Maekelberg and Krista De Jonge, also 
suggested that the chapel and oratory at the Prince?s Court in Bruges may have served as the 
model for a further development at the Rihour Palace in Lille, which does survive. This building 
was begun by Philip the Good in 1453 and completed in 1473, during Charles the Bold?s reign. 
At the Rihour Palace, the oratory was placed on the upper level, giving a view of both the main 
chapel and another smaller chapel (see Figure 9).6  
In Bruges, this practice of observing mass from an unseen, raised position was not solely 
a royal phenomenon. Another oratory was built in the Adornes family?s private church known as 
 
3 Sanne Maekelberg and Krista De Jonge, ?The Prince?s Court at Bruges: A 
Reconstruction of the Lost Residence of the Dukes of Burgundy,? Architectural Histories 6(1) 
2018, 1. 
4 Ibid., 9. 
5 Richard Vaughan, Charles the Bold: The Last Valois Duke of Burgundy (Woodbridge: 
Boydell, 2002), 51. 
6 Maekelberg and De Jonge, ?The Prince?s Court at Bruges,? 9. 
             35 
the Jerusalem Chapel.7 The chapel?s interior was almost entirely constructed between 1470 and 
14838 by Anselmo Adornes, a leading member of the Order of the Dry Tree, a confraternity 
which supported polyphony.9 The highly unusual chapel features a recreation of Christ?s tomb in 
its crypt, and an upper and lower sanctuary, all overlooked by the family?s oratory which 
connected to their living quarters. Adornes traveled to the Holy Land in February 1470, arriving 
back in April 1471, and seems to have conceived of this design on his return, in part to 
accommodate the relics he had accumulated during his trip.10 
 
English Music Patrons and Their Oratories 
I propose that the oratories built under Gruuthuse, Edward, Anselmo, Philip the Good and 
Charles the Bold, which all took place alongside patronage of polyphonic music, appear to be 
part of a wider Anglo-Burgundian phenomenon. One contemporary example is found at Christ?s 
College, Cambridge, founded by Lady Margaret Beaufort in 1505 (see Figure 10). Margaret, a 
descendant of Edward III, was a preeminent figure at the English court, and her son would 
become Henry VII. She had multiple connections to Edward IV, and in the 1470s, was married 
to Thomas Lord Stanley, who was then the Steward of the king?s household.11 Like Edward, 
Margaret was renowned for her musical patronage and had her own large chapel choir?by 1508 
it had ten children and twelve gentlemen12?which served as a feeder to the choir of the Chapel 
 
7 Martens, ?Artistic Patronage in Bruges Institutions, ca. 1440?1482,? 220. 
8 Ibid., 308. 
9 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 72. 
10 Martens, ?Artistic Patronage in Bruges Institutions, ca. 1440?1482,? 314. 
11 Kisby, ?The Early-Tudor Royal Household Chapel,? 266. 
12 Fiona Kisby, ?A Mirror of Monarchy: Music and Musicians in the Household Chapel 
of the Lady Margaret Beaufort, Mother of Henry VII,? Early Music History 16 (1997): 215. 
             36 
Royal.13 In the new complex of buildings at Christ?s College, the upper floor of the Master?s 
Lodge was set aside as accommodation for Margaret when she was in residence.14 One of the 
small rooms in these quarters has an oriel window that looks out into the chapel, and is therefore 
thought to have been Margaret?s oratory.15 In the chapel itself, the statutes required members of 
the college to perform a substantial number of sung services.16  
A slightly later example is found in the musical and architectural projects of Bishop 
Edmund Audley (c.1440?1524). Audley was appointed canon and prebendary17 of St. George?s 
Windsor in 1474, and therefore would have experienced many of Edward?s reforms there.18 He 
was then appointed Bishop of Rochester in 1480, where he demonstrated a musical interest: he 
was responsible for installing choir stalls in the Lady Chapel to facilitate polyphonic Lady 
masses.19 Audley moved on to be Bishop of Hereford in 1492, where he built his own personal 
two-story chantry chapel on the south side of the Lady Chapel (see Figure 12).20 The form of the 
chapel undoubtedly owes much to the design of similar spaces at St. George?s Windsor,21 but the 
function of this chapel has not been settled: one explanation is that it was an oratory, another is 
that it was a singing gallery. I propose that the former is more likely if it is considered as part of 
 
13 Kisby, ?The Early-Tudor Royal Household Chapel,? 91. 
14 Nikolaus Pevsner, Cambridgeshire, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 50. 
15 Ibid. 
16 J. P. C. Roach, A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 3, the 
City and University of Cambridge (London: Victoria County History, 1959) 429?36. 
17 An individual receiving a lifelong income called a prebend that was associated with an 
ecclesiastical benefice (an office in the church). 
18 Cathy Oakes, ?In Pursuit of Heaven: The Two Chantry Chapels of Bishop Edmund 
Audley at Hereford and Salisbury Cathedrals,? Journal of the British Archaeological 
Association, 164:1 (2011): 197?8. 
19 Ibid., 205. 
20 Ibid., 206. 
21 Ibid., 205. 
             37 
this longer lineage of galleries overlooking musico-liturgical spaces, especially given that the 
upper level of the chapel offers what Carol Oakes describes as a ?dress-circle view? of the 
altar.22 
 
Sympathetic Insiders 
The idea that listening to polyphony was important to late-medieval European music patrons 
runs counter to comments that scholars have made about the performance of polyphony and 
musical patronage in this period. For example, Jeffrey Dean, in his study of performances by the 
Sistine Chapel singers in around 1500, argues that ?sacred polyphony was composed and 
performed to be listened to by the singers themselves.?23 Dean goes on to argue that ?the actual 
listeners, the expected listeners, the listeners for whom the music was composed and performed, 
comprised the singers themselves and a few sympathetic outsiders.?24 And Roger Bowers states 
that those who funded choirs ?did not see themselves as patrons of music? and that their overall 
aim was not to foster and grow the art of polyphony but instead was ?the augmentation of the 
store of merit in heaven that would be found on the Day of Judgement to have been aggregated 
to their account.?25  
While the role of singers as listeners to their own performances and the desired spiritual 
advantage of patrons must be acknowledged, I contend that specific circumstances of late-
medieval Burgundy and England suggest alternative motivations for the performance of 
 
22 Oakes, ?In Pursuit of Heaven,? 206. 
23 Jeffrey Dean, ?Listening to Sacred Polyphony c.1500,? Early Music 25, no. 4 (1997): 
620. 
24 Ibid., 628. 
25 Roger Bowers, ?Aristocratic and Popular Piety in the Patronage of Music in the 
Fifteenth-Century Netherlands,? Studies in Church History 28 (1992): 215. 
             38 
polyphony. In this milieu, Dean?s supposed divide between singers and non-singers is 
undermined by the case of the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold. There is significant 
information about the duke?s involvement in music, not as a passive patron but as an active and 
even creative participant. For example, a description by court chronicler Jean Molinet of 
Charles? habits at the siege of Neuss in 1475 details how ?every evening he has something new 
sung in his quarters and sometimes his lordship sings, though he does not have a good voice.?26 
Another account, from the historian Thomas Basin (1412?1491) who was on the payroll of Louis 
XI and therefore not predisposed to flatter Charles, describes the duke as ?loving excellent 
singers as did his father. So he always had a worthy and magnificent chapel and took great 
pleasure in the singing of his singers; and he even himself sometimes sang in private.?27  
As well as being a singer and a listener, Charles was a composer: an account from 1460, 
recorded in a chant manuscript at Cambrai Cathedral, describes how ?Charles composed a motet 
and all its music,28 which was sung in his presence after Mass had been said in Cambrai 
Cathedral by the master and the children.?29 Fallows argues that ?a motet and all its music? 
should be understood to mean ?sophisticated polyphony,? and that as this was the work of a 
twenty-seven-year-old man it was not a schoolboy exercise.30 In the case of Charles the Bold 
 
26 David Fallows, ?Charles the Bold as Patron, Singer, and Composer,? Tijdschrift van de 
Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 69 (2019): 5. 
27 Ibid., 6. 
28 Barbara Haggh-Huglo, Recollecting the Virgin Mary with Music: Guillaume Du Fay?s 
Chant across Five Centuries, Chapter 12 (M?nster: American Institute of Musicology, 
forthcoming), suggests that the translation here should be ?and all the chant,? and that whether it 
was plainchant or polyphony, this could refer to a setting of a Marian text or one for St. Severin. 
29 Fallows, ?Charles the Bold,? 3. 
30 Ibid., 4. 
             39 
therefore, we have a clear example of a ?sympathetic insider? as opposed to Dean?s ?sympathetic 
outsider.?  
Of course, the fact that a sovereign observes a mass in an oratory does not imply that they 
are focused on the liturgy: a Venetian ambassador reported from Henry VIII?s court that the king 
habitually attended three to five masses a day in his private closet, but that he would complete 
paperwork while he did so.31 Likewise, oratories had other uses than listening to masses: the 
famous frontispiece from the Hours of Mary of Burgundy (reproduced in Figure 8) depicts the 
interior of an oratory being used for private devotion. This image is of interest to this study 
because it is now thought to have been commissioned for Charles the Bold?s daughter, Mary, and 
possibly to depict her.32 Mary, too, was a patron of music: she provided an endowment for Our 
Lady?s Collegiate Church in Bruges in 1482, in connection with her burial there, that would pay 
for two daily sung masses performed by the succentor, four choirboys and an organist.33 It is 
possible that many of the oratories discussed above would have been glazed, originally, as in this 
example. This would have affected the listening experience, unless the windows could be opened 
as they are here.34 Certainly, the Gruuthuse oratory was originally intended to have glazing, as 
the permission notice from the chapter makes reference to this.35 
 
 
31 Fiona Kisby, ?When the King Goeth a Procession?: Chapel Ceremonies and Services, 
the Ritual Year, and Religious Reforms at the Early Tudor Court, 1485?1547,? Journal of British 
Studies 40, no. 1 (2001): 52. 
32 Anne Van Buren-Hagopian, ?The Master of Mary of Burgundy and His Colleagues: 
The State of Research and Questions of Method,? Zeitschrift F?r Kunstgeschichte 38, no. 3/4 
(1975): 275. 
33 Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion, 277. 
34 I am grateful to Olga Haldey for raising the issue of glazed and unglazed oratory 
windows, and how they would affect the listening experience. 
35 Martens, ?Artistic Patronage in Bruges Institutions, ca. 1440?1482,? 532. 
             40 
Figure 8: The Hours of Mary of Burgundy, Vienna, Austrian National Library, Cod. 1857, fol. 
14v.36  
 
 
 
Acoustical Factors 
Even if the design of the oratories was not made primarily to improve the listener?s experience of 
polyphony, at least two aspects of the study of musical acoustics suggest that it may have done 
so. Firstly, there is the issue of the apparent similarities between the late-medieval oratory and 
 
36 This image is in the public domain: 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hours_of_Mary_of_Burgundy_Virgin_and_Child.jpg. 
             41 
the subsequent design of boxes in theaters and concert halls. Studies have shown that one of the 
benefits of the box is that the initial-time-delay gap37 is generally shorter in the balcony than on 
the ground floor.38 This effect would only be increased in a church with a stone vaulted ceiling 
and a significant reverberation time. Therefore, moving from the position of listening on the 
ground level to the upper level of an oratory would improve the clarity of polyphonic music. 
Second, there is the issue of higher tones diffracting less successfully than lower tones.39 
Therefore if an ensemble changed from being an adult vocal ensemble singing up to, say, G4 to 
one with the addition of boys? voices singing up to G5, it would be more important to have an 
unobstructed line of listening to the ensemble. In this way, an oratory could prove a useful 
vantage point, especially given the crowding at some ceremonies, such as the one depicted in 
Figure 11. 
It is also important to consider whether changes to performing ensembles would have 
induced late-medieval listeners to find locations where the acoustics would be optimal for them. 
For example, in England until at least the 1450s, the archetypal ensemble for performing 
polyphony consisted of four skilled adult singers.40 Yet by the mid-1470s, changes in the scoring 
of polyphonic repertoire, increases in the vocal tessitura, and associated substantial expansions of 
personnel led to choirs that could number more than thirty, such as the one Edward installed at 
Windsor.41 Of course, a choir that is eight times larger, does not equate to a choral sound that is 
 
37 The initial time delay gap (ITDG) measures the distance between the arrival of the 
direct sound and the first reflections. A shorter ITDG is associated with a clearer sound. 
38 Leo L. Beranek, Music, Acoustics & Architecture (New York: Wiley, 1962), 468. 
39 Ibid. 
40 Roger Bowers, ?To Chorus from Quartet,? 16. 
41 These changes are laid out in Bowers, ?The Music and Musical Establishment of St.  
George?s Chapel in the 15th Century.? 
             42 
eight times as loud. Instead, each doubling of the size of a choir will add three decibels. 
Therefore, a group of thirty-two singers would be nine decibels louder than a choir of four 
singers.42 However, the effect on the listener of this increase would still have been substantial: it 
is widely accepted that a ten-decibel increase is perceived as being twice as loud.43 Therefore, it 
should be considered as a possibility that the late-medieval worshiper, especially if they were the 
patron funding the music and the design of the church or chapel, might want to occupy a 
different listening position if the polyphonic performance in the 1480s was almost twice as loud 
as it had been in the 1450s.  
While I have not yet found evidence that proves the importance of listening from the 
oratory, the development of these spaces alongside late-medieval choral expansions suggests a 
possible relationship. There is consensus that Edward?s Windsor oratory was at least influenced 
by Gruuthuse?s in Bruges, and as I will outline in the next two chapters, there are hints that 
Edward and Richard?s choral reforms were inspired by those of their Burgundian peers. These 
coincidences lead to the broader question of whether musical changes can be seen to work 
together with architectural and acoustic ones during this period. My argument, based on the 
polyphonic patrons and their architectural projects detailed above, is that there are signs of a 
correlation. 
 
 
 
 
 
42 Ingo R. Titze and Lynn Maxfield, ?Acoustic Factors Affecting the Dynamic Range of a 
Choir,? The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America vol. 142, 4 (2017): 2468. 
43 Lincoln Gray, ?Properties of Sound,? Journal of Perinatology 20 (2000): S6. 
             43 
Figure 9: The Main Chapel at the Rihour Palace in Lille, showing the large window to the 
oratory on the upper level. 
 
 
? Sanne Maekelberg 2018 (used with permission) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
             44 
Figure 10: The Chapel at Christ?s College Cambridge, with a window into an oratory on the 
upper level on the right. 
 
 
Photo by David Iliff. License: Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
             45 
Figure 11: Anonymous miniaturist, Presentation of the Keys of the City to the Virgin, biccherna 
(painted book cover on panel), 1483, Siena, Museo delle Tavolette di Biccherna.44 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
44 This image is in the public domain: https://www.wga.hu/frames-
e.html?/html/m/master/xunk_it/xunk_it3/offering.html 
             46 
Figure 12: Hereford Cathedral Lady Chapel, with the double-level Audley Chantry/Oratory on 
the right. 
 
 
Photo by David Iliff. License: Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
             47 
Chapter Four 
Edward IV?s Experiences of Hearing the Choir of Charles the Bold 
 
Charles the Bold was a keen singer and composer of polyphony who in the years immediately 
before 1470 had spent a great deal of money and effort ensuring his chapel choir was both large 
and of a high quality.1 Despite the complex political circumstances, Edward and the duke met on 
a number of occasions during the king?s exile. Edward and his courtiers? contact with the duke?s 
impressive choral ensemble may have influenced the subsequent reorganization and reform of 
English choirs. I will describe the opportunities Edward would have had to hear Charles? choir, 
and detail what is known about its makeup and repertoire at the time. And I will present evidence 
that the prescribed use of six high voices in performances of polyphony by the duke?s choir was 
part of a trend of installing six choirboys in choirs in the Burgundian territory and may have been 
the inspiration for the introduction of cohorts of the same size in English ensembles. 
 
Edward?s Relationship with Charles the Bold  
The ties between Edward and Charles were formalized by the Duke?s marriage, in 1468, to 
Edward?s sister Margaret of York.2 In the same year, Edward was made a Knight of the Golden 
Fleece, Charles? chivalric order, at its meeting in Bruges.3 While Edward did not attend either 
event, membership in Charles? order tied him to an organization with a flourishing musical 
component: Barbara Haggh-Huglo notes that from 1468 onwards the acta of the Order of the 
 
1 For Charles as singer and composer, David Fallows, ?Charles the Bold as Patron, 
Singer, and Composer,? Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 69 
(2019): 3?18; for Charles? spending see Paula Higgins, ?Antoine Busnois and Musical Culture in 
Late Fifteenth-Century France and Burgundy? (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1987), 79. 
2 Vaughan, Charles the Bold, 49?53. 
3 Details of Edward?s joining the order are given in Fr?d?ric Auguste Ferdinand Thomas 
de Reiffenberg, Histoire de l?Ordre de la Toison d?Or (Brussels 1830), 55?8. 
             48 
Golden Fleece contain an increasing amount of information about its music, which may have 
been linked to Charles? subsequent reorganization of his chapel choir,4 and William Prizer has 
emphasized the importance of polyphony at the Order?s meetings.5 In 1469, the bond between 
the two rulers was again reinforced as Charles became a Knight of the Garter, Edward?s 
equivalent order. But the strength of the alliance between Edward and Charles should not be 
overstated: Charles continued to balance Yorkist and Lancastrian ties for the rest of his life. This 
can either be seen as part of the duke?s wider strategy of remaining politically neutral, or as a 
stance that gave him the option of aligning himself with either side as circumstances required. 
This policy of equanimity did not mean that Charles kept his distance from the English 
and their power struggles. For example, while the duke had a loyalty to the Yorkist faction 
through his wife Margaret and brother-in-law Edward, he also maintained two prominent 
Lancastrian exiles, Edmund Beaufort and Henry Holland, at his court. And in April and May of 
1470, Charles had hosted the earl of Warwick, Edward?s nemesis, at St. Omer. In fact, Charles 
was so devoted to his disinterested status that he attempted to intercede, unsuccessfully, between 
Warwick and Edward later in the year.6 
 
The Political Circumstances on Edward?s Arrival  
The political circumstances of Edward?s October 1470 arrival in the duke?s territories were 
particularly fraught. Warwick had by now fallen foul of Charles, due to both an attack the 
Englishman?s fleet had made on Burgundian shipping, and the earl?s burgeoning alliance with 
 
4 Barbara Haggh, ?The Archives of the Order,? 10. 
5 William F. Prizer, ?Music and Ceremonial in the Low Countries: Philip the Fair and the 
Order of the Golden Fleece,? Early Music History 5 (1985): 113?53. 
6 Vaughan, Charles the Bold, 61. 
             49 
the French King Louis XI.7 The second half of 1470 was also a time of rising hostility between 
Louis and Charles, with an exchange of strong rhetoric and tit-for-tat economic measures. By 
January 1471, France and Burgundy were on the brink of war, which eventually took the form of 
a series of skirmishes in February and March.8  
These interconnected political pressures explain why Charles was very cautious about 
agreeing to a meeting with Edward, lest this be understood as a sign of a military alliance against 
France, something he was already being accused of by King Louis.9 So, in the months after 
Edward?s arrival, Charles was not prepared to organize even a private rendezvous and would 
only commit to paying the deposed English king?s expenses.10 
 
Edward at Charles? Court 
It was therefore not until December 26, 1470, that Edward was summoned to meet Charles. We 
know of the summit between the two leaders at Aire-sur-la-Lys, near St. Omer, from January 2?
4, 1471, and another at St. Pol, some twenty miles to the south, on January 7.11 But Charles? 
itinerary suggests that Edward spent additional time at the Duke?s castle at nearby Hesdin, where 
he could be found until January 31. These meetings did not result in a public declaration from the 
duke for Edward?s cause, but they did help secure financial support and ships for the king?s 
planned return to England where he would seek to retake his throne by force. 
 
7 Vaughan, Charles the Bold, 61. 
8 Ibid., 64?7. 
9 Ibid., 67. 
10 Ibid., 64. 
11 Ross, Edward IV, 204. 
             50 
The castle at Hesdin, where Edward is likely to have spent most time with Charles, was 
one of the duke?s preferred residences. While the medieval castle no longer stands, the bailiff?s 
accounts provide information about the building. We know that there were several chapels and 
oratories in the castle?s private quarters, but that there was also a large chapel that served the 
whole community.12 This building was two stories high and had a nave and a choir flanked by 
smaller rooms and chapels including oratories for the duke and duchess. In addition, an inventory 
from 1469 gives details of the chapel?s furnishings.13 It reveals an organization with meager 
resources, including those relating to music: the chapel there only possessed two chant books.14 
However, the Burgundian court was by no means static, and the limited inventory of Hesdin 
need not imply that musical life there was spartan when the duke was in residence. When 
Charles the Bold travelled, he took his entire chapel personnel with him, almost without fail.15  
 
Charles the Bold?s Chapel Choir  
Charles? personal involvement in music is firmly established. The duke was himself both a 
singer and a composer.16 He also maintained close connections to the careers of musicians who 
 
12 Anne Van Buren-Hagopian, ?Trois Inventaires de la Chapelle du Ch?teau d?Hesdin 
(1384?1469). V?tements Liturgiques, Manuscrits et un Reliquaire de Saint Louis,? Publications 
du Centre Europ?en d?Etudes Bourguignonnes 25 (1985): 34. 
13 Van Buren-Hagopian, ?Trois inventaires de la chapelle du ch?teau d?Hesdin (1384?
1469): v?tements liturgiques, manuscrits et un reliquaire de Saint Louis,? 33?4. Van Buren-
Hagiopan?s only reference to the chant books is: ?La pr?sence de deux livres de chant seulement, 
diff?rents, indique que seuls le ma?tre du ch?ur et le clerg? voyaient des notes ?crites?? 
14 It is conceivable that the inventory implies the Duke and Duchess, just two years into 
their reign, were planning an upgrade. This would explain why the Duke was so devoted to the 
residence, it being his preferred base during the second half of 1469 and the early part of 1470. 
15 Higgins, ?Antoine Busnois and Musical Culture,? 92. 
16 The details of Charles? musical interests and abilities are fully laid out in Fallows, 
?Charles the Bold as Patron, Singer, and Composer,? Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor 
Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 69 (2019): 3?18. 
             51 
were employed at his court such as Antoine Busnois and Hayne van Ghizeghem.17 Paula Higgins 
summarizes that ?[Charles?] musical training and interests evidently surpassed those of all other 
fifteenth-century princes.?18 It is therefore not surprising that the duke?s accounts and ordinances 
reveal the considerable resources he spent on maintaining his chapel choir. 
Perhaps the most significant musician Edward could have encountered at Charles? court 
was Busnois, a musician who was described by Johannes Tinctoris in 1474, together with 
Johannes Ockeghem, as ?the most outstanding and most famous teachers of the art of music.?19 
Busnois would have been emerging as an important musician at the Burgundian court at this 
point: Higgins argues that although at the beginning of 1470, Busnois was not yet an official 
member of the chapel,20 he was already involved as a singer, as robes for him in that role had 
been commissioned in 1469.21 The chapel records suggest that he was a full member of the 
chapel by October 1470.22 
In the period immediately before Edward?s exile, Charles? accounts reveal a 
preoccupation with increasing the singing staff of his chapel, which, on his accession, the duke 
seems to have judged as not meeting his requirements.23 As Higgins puts it, in the years from 
1467 to 1470, ?Charles appears to have been especially concerned with expanding the vocal 
 
17 David Fallows, ?Specific Information on the Ensembles for Composed Polyphony, 
1400?1474,? in Studies in the Performance of Late Medieval Music, ed. Stanley Boorman 
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 110. 
18 Higgins, ?Antoine Busnois and Musical Culture,? 63. 
19 Paula Higgins, ?In Hydraulis? Revisited: New Light on the Career of Antoine 
Busnois,? Journal of the American Musicological Society 39, no. 1 (1986): 36. 
20 Higgins, ?Antoine Busnois and Musical Culture,? 68?70. 
21 Ibid., 69. 
22 Higgins, ?In Hydraulis? Revisited,? 43?4. 
23 Ibid. 
             52 
forces of his chapel.?24 While there is little evidence of what polyphonic music was sung in 
Charles? burgeoning chapel,25 we do have information about the contemporary makeup of his 
choir. This is provided by the court ordinances of 1469, and payroll accounts from the same year. 
The ordinances, in particular, provide a great deal of detail, with a quarter of the folios relating to 
the organization of Charles? chapel.26 For example, one subsection makes it clear that new 
standards of professionalism were now required from the members of the chapel. No longer 
would ?immoderate talking, chatting, conversations, mockeries, signs, derisions, games, 
laughing and other vain and frivolous things? be acceptable.27  
This dedicated organization of chapel activities has a direct parallel in Edward?s actions 
on his return to England. Here he commissioned his own major court ordinance in 1471, the 
Black Book of the Household, and a subsequent one in 1478.28 While the Black Book of the 
Household does not survive in full, it is significant in musical terms because it introduces the 
title of Master of the Choristers for the first time at the Chapel Royal.29 And the ordinance in 
1478 came at another significant moment for the Chapel Royal: Henry Abingdon, who had been 
Master of the Choristers from 1455, stepped down.30 He was replaced by Giles Banaster, who 
had been an employee of Edward?s since 1469, and whose music features in the Eton Choirbook 
 
24 Higgins, ?Antoine Busnois and Musical Culture,? 79. 
25 Ibid., 95. 
26 Fallows, ?Specific Information,? 110. 
27 Vaughan, Charles the Bold, 194. 
28 Reproduced in A.R. Myers, The Household of Edward IV: The Black Book and the 
Ordinance of 1478 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959). 
29 Kisby, ?The Early-Tudor Royal Household Chapel,? 104. 
30 Ibid., 442. 
             53 
(Eton College, Ms. 178).31 The organization of Edward?s chapel music through court ordinances 
and the promotion of younger personnel suggest the influence of Charles the Bold?s reforms. 
Charles? ordinance of 1469, however, goes into more detail about music than Edward?s 
later documents. The most important feature is the directive for the singing of polyphony 
(according to David Fallows? translation of ?chant du livre?).32 It specifies that ?there shall be at 
least six high voices, three tenors, three contrabasses and two moiens [singers with a ?medium? 
range].?33 We can therefore envisage a situation where Edward might have heard such a group at 
the duke?s court, formed of a minimum of fourteen singers, performing polyphony in a liturgical 
context. But reconstructing the basic sonority of this ensemble is challenging, because the 
identity of the top part of this choir remains unclear. There is a question mark over whether the 
?six high voices? were intended to be men or children. Fallows argues that the court ordinances, 
if taken in conjunction with court account books from January 1469, can answer this beyond 
doubt. These accounts list the chapel staff at this point: there were thirteen chaplains, four clercs, 
and six sommeliers?these were, in effect, three ranks of singers, in descending order of 
superiority, some of whom in each category could also be priests.34 No boys are mentioned. 
There is a problem with Fallows? calculations, however. The ordinances state that the 
sommeliers were not primarily musical, and Fallows interprets the 6/3/3/2 requirement for 
polyphony as excluding them. This means that at the time of these accounts, the fourteen singers 
needed for polyphony would have been drawn from the thirteen chaplains and four clercs. But a 
 
31 Magnus Williamson, ?Royal Image-Making and Textual Interplay in Gilbert 
Banaster?s ?O Maria Et Elizabeth?,? Early Music History 19 (2000): 242. 
32 Fallows, ?Specific Information,? 111. Barbara Haggh-Huglo says this was discant 
improvised from a chant book following established rules of counterpoint. 
33 Ibid., 110. 
34 Ibid., 113. 
             54 
line directly after that says that the polyphonic group of fourteen must exclude the four chaplains 
needed to officiate at High Mass.35 Thus, in January of 1469, it is my reading that four-part 
polyphony would not have been possible at High Mass in the Duke?s Chapel if only the singers 
on the payroll are included in the calculation, as at most only thirteen singers would have been 
available. 
Fallows, having discounted the idea that the ?hautes voix? were those of boys, grapples 
with the alternatives. He examines the idea of the ducal choir having, in modern terms, either six 
tenors or six falsettists on the top line of polyphony, with two or three singers on the other parts. 
As Fallows admits, to the modern musician this seems unlikely to produce a suitable balance, 
unless a vastly different singing technique is being employed to those of today. I believe it is 
therefore worth considering the possibility that the six ?hautes voix? may have been boys, who 
for some reason were not referred to in the January 1469 account books but were nevertheless 
included in the prescription for polyphony in the ordinance. 
Boys had certainly played a role in the polyphonic Burgundian choirs of previous 
decades. Philip the Good had ensured that the Order of the Golden Fleece had four choristers in 
its chapel choir from 1425, based at St. Peter?s collegiate church in Lille.36 It could have been 
these boys or those based in the order?s church, the St. Chapelle in Dijon, who sang polyphonic 
excerpts at the Order?s Feast of the Pheasant in 1454, the famous banquet hosted by Philip. On 
that occasion, one of the theatrical scenes was presented in a mock church, where ?three little 
choirboys and a tenor sang a very sweet song.?37 Later in the feast, a boy sang the treble part of 
 
35 Fallows, ?Specific Information,? 110. 
36 Prizer, ?Music and Ceremonial,? 116. 
37 Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin, eds. Music in the Western World: A History in 
Documents. 2nd ed. (Australia: Thomson/Schirmer, 2008), 70, quoting Jeanne Marix, Les 
             55 
the rondeau ?Je ne vis oncques la pareille? while a ?stag? sang the tenor. This was followed by 
the singers in the mock church singing a motet. The high regard in which the boy choristers were 
held is shown by the care taken when they travelled on horseback to performances. In these 
instances, large cushions would be provided for their comfort.38  
There is also iconographic evidence supporting the prevalence of singing boys in 
Burgundian ducal circles, found in Jean Mansel?s La Fleur des Histoires. This manuscript is a 
world history in two volumes that was cataloged in the inventory of Philip the Good?s library 
made on his death in 1467.39 One of its numerous illustrations (see Figure 13) depicts a mass 
being celebrated. In the image, a nobleman is worshiping in his closet, with a choir singing in the 
foreground. Grouped around the music stand, the ensemble includes five or six male singers and 
three boy choristers. 
While the illustration is not thought to be a direct depiction of Philip the Good, because 
the duke was customarily shown wearing black clothes, there are clear connections between the 
image and the Burgundian court chapel. Firstly, in the drawing, the coats of arms of ancient 
Burgundy and Flanders are found in the stained glass windows on both sides of the chapel.40 
Second, Lisa Deam argues that as this miniature falls within the section of La Fleur des Histoires 
on French history, it is one of several designed to have ?special meaning for a duke obsessed 
 
Musiciens de la cour de Bourgogne au XVe si?cle (Strasbourg: Heitz & Co., 1937), 38?41 (from 
Mathieu d?Escouchy, Chronique). Translated by Richard Taruskin. 
38 Jeanne Marix, ?Hayne van Ghizeghem: Musician at the Court of the 15th-Century 
Burgundian Dukes,? The Musical Quarterly 28, no. 3 (1942): 278, quoting Lille, Archives 
d?partementales du Nord, Series B 3361, fols. 28r and 129v. 
39 Anne Dubois, ?La Fleur des Histoires de Jean Mansel,? Art de l?Enluminure no. 72 
(2020): 6. 
40 Ibid. 
             56 
with crusading and with asserting his stature and lineage.?41 And the artist of the illustration is 
thought to be Ma?tre de Th?rouanne, active from the 1450s.42 The Ma?tre de Th?rouanne was 
probably a colleague of Simon Marmion, an artist who worked for both Philip the Good and 
Charles the Bold.43 Finally, Mansel, the author of La Fleur des Histoires, also provides a 
connection to Burgundian court life: he was a civil servant in the service of the Burgundian 
dukes who held several positions at Hesdin Castle from 1435 onwards, and was responsible for 
the works carried out there for Charles in 1470.44 
There are also numerous records in Burgundy during this period of choirboys in groups 
of six, which could be counterparts to the duke?s six ?hautes voix.? As early as 1450, for 
example, there were six choirboys at Tournai Cathedral.45 A slightly later instance is found at St. 
Gudula?s Church in Brussels, where six choirboys were trained to sing polyphony from 1466, 
joining ten adult singers already on the payroll since 1444.46 And elsewhere near the same city, 
at the church of Sts. Guido and Peter in Anderlecht, there are records of choirboys as early as the 
fourteenth century, and a formal endowment for six choirboys, aged nine to ten-years-old, whose 
role is thought to have involved singing polyphony, was made in 1481 by Willelmus Swinnen.47 
In this case there is a direct connection to St. Donatian?s Church in Bruges, the parish church of 
 
41 Lisa Deam, ?Mapping the Past: The ?Fleur Des Histoires? (Brussels, Biblioth?que 
Royale, Ms. 9231?9232) in the Context of Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Historiography? (PhD 
diss., University of Chicago, 2001), 81. 
42 Dubois, ?La Fleur des Histoires,? 14. 
43 Sandra Hindman, ?The Case of Simon Marmion: Attributions & Documents,? 
Zeitschrift F?r Kunstgeschichte 40, no. 3/4 (1977): 198. 
44 Dubois, ?La Fleur des Histoires,? 6. 
45 Barbara Haggh, ?Music, Liturgy, and Ceremony in Brussels, 1350?1500? (PhD diss., 
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1988), 160. 
46 Haggh, ?Music, Liturgy, and Ceremony,? 83 and 222. 
47 Ibid., 163; Haggh-Huglo, Recollecting the Virgin Mary in Music, Chapter 15. 
             57 
the Burgundian court, as Swinnen was the secretary to John of Burgundy (1404?1479), the 
church?s provost. 
St. Donatian?s church itself offers one final instance of the phenomenon in Burgundy of a 
six-choirboy cohort. The church was connected to the ducal chapel by way of its music staff, 
who often held simultaneous appointments both at the church and at court. One example of this 
was the singer Gilles Joye, a complex figure whose career is examined in Chapter 5. In the 
1460s, Joye was first a clerk and then a chaplain in the ducal chapel, whilst also holding a 
prebend at St. Donatian?s. On leaving court due to illness in 1468 he was given administrative 
tasks at St. Donatian?s. Among these was the instruction by the chapter in 1469 for Joye to work 
on the financing of a new endowment for the church?s four choirboys. A year later, Johannes 
vanden Coutere made a donation of rental income to the endowment for these choirboys, but the 
project was not completed until 1484, when the group of four choirboys that sang polyphony was 
increased to six.48 
 
Connections to English Choirs  
This pattern emerging in Burgundian choirs of groups of six choristers has an apparent parallel in 
new English ensembles established soon after. For example, a new foundation, Middleham 
College in Yorkshire, was created in 1478 by Edward?s brother, the future Richard III, who had 
accompanied Edward during his exile. At Middleham, the number of choristers was to be six, 49 
and the college statutes state that they were to sing polyphony at Lady mass daily with the clerks, 
 
48 Hendrik Callewier, ??What You Do on the Sly? Will Be Deemed Forgiven in the 
Sight of the Most High?: Gilles Joye and the Changing Status of Singers in Fifteenth-Century 
Bruges,? Journal of the Alamire Foundation 1 (2009): 98. 
49 Roger Bowers, ?Choral Institutions Within the English Church: Their Constitution and 
Development, 1340?1500? (PhD diss., University of East Anglia, 1975), 6031. 
             58 
with priked song [notated polyphony] and organs.50 One of the four clerks was to be charged 
with educating the boys ?in playne song [plainsong], priked song, faburdon [improvised 
polyphony based on a middle voice], countr? [a form of counterpoint?], descant [elsewhere 
?discant,? improvised singing above a tenor voice] of all mesures used in any Cathedrall church 
or Collage.?51 Richard also made plans for a college at Barnard Castle in County Durham in 
1478 which never came to fruition, but here too we know that the institution was to have six 
choristers.52 It was also to have ten clerks, which suggests that the number of choristers was not 
chosen simply to be in proportion to the number of adult singers. Another new foundation, Jesus 
College, Rotherham, was established with six choristers in 1483, who with their singing master 
had to perform daily services, a weekly Jesus mass and a Marian antiphon at vespers.53 
This pattern of establishing six boys in new English colleges had its parallels with those 
ensembles that were being adapted rather than started from scratch. For example, in 1480 the 
Lady Chapel Choir of Westminster Abbey was modernized in order to meet the musical demands 
of the new era. In practice, this meant adding a team of boy choristers to the existing group of 
adult male singers. Again, the number of boys chosen for this purpose was six.54 And at 
Worcester Cathedral, Bishop John Alcock, one of Edward?s Privy Councillors, also oversaw a 
 
50 James Raine, ?The Statutes Ordained by Richard duke of Gloucester for the College of 
Middleham, dated July 4, 18 Edw. IV. [1478],? Archaeological Journal 14 (1857): 160?70. 
51 Ibid. 
52 Bowers, ?Choral Institutions,? 6031. 
53 Ibid., 6028, and Arthur Francis Leach, Early Yorkshire Schools, (Leeds: Yorkshire 
Archaeological Society, 1903), 2: xxxiii. 
54 Roger Bowers, ?The Musicians and Liturgy of the Lady Chapels of the Monastery 
Church c.1235?1540,? in Westminster Abbey: The Lady Chapel of Henry VII, eds. Tim Tatton-
Brown and Richard Mortimer (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), 48. 
             59 
similar transformation. Here, the Lady Chapel Choir had previously had only one or two singing 
boys, but six were recorded for the first time in 1479.55 
 
Conclusion 
Edward?s time as Charles the Bold?s guest would have given him opportunities to observe the 
duke?s chapel first-hand, and even to take part in its liturgies himself. While there are other ways 
in which the king could have learned about the latest developments in music for worship on the 
continent, such as from ambassadors and correspondence, this would surely be no match for 
experiencing the duke?s highly regulated ensemble in person. The link between the duke?s 
organization of his choir and Edward?s subsequent focus on ordering his own Chapel Royal, 
suggests that the king was aware of Charles? work in this area.   
It seems conceivable that Edward would have heard the Duke?s chapel choir on several 
occasions during his time at court in January 1471, perhaps at Hesdin Castle. This would have 
been a rare opportunity to take in what was a ?normal? occasion in the chapel, rather than a 
lavish ceremony. If Edward did hear the duke?s choir sing polyphony with its requisite ?six high 
voices,? given Charles? efforts to recruit an excellent and sizable choir, it is likely to have been 
an impressive experience. Given that evidence from numerous English and Burgundian examples 
from this period suggests that the desirable number of boy choristers on a polyphonic team was 
six, I propose that Edward and his entourage did hear the duke?s six ?hautes voix? sing 
polyphony, and that this subsequently became a model for choirs in English institutions. 
 
 
 
 
55 Bowers, ?Choral Institutions,? 6050?51. 
             60 
Figure 13: C?l?bration de la messe en pr?sence d?un seigneur (detail from Brussels, Royal 
Library, Ms. 9232, fol. 269r), attrib. Ma?tre de Th?rouanne in La Fleur des Histoires.56 
 
 
[REDACTED IMAGE] 
  
 
56 Barbara Haggh-Huglo notes that here a bishop is celebrating as is evident from his 
mitre; the red hat could be that of a cardinal. 
             61 
Chapter 5 
The Choirboys and Lay Clerks of St. Donatian?s Church in Bruges as a Polyphonic Model 
 
St. Donatian?s Church  
While Edward IV?s lodgings at the Gruuthuse Palace in Bruges would surely have allowed him 
to hear the singing in the adjacent Collegiate Church of Our Lady, another nearby church in the 
city, St. Donatian?s, could not have escaped the king?s attention. Perhaps the first thing Edward 
would have noticed about St. Donatian?s would have been its impact on the Bruges soundscape. 
The bells of the church, pitched ut, rang nine times in the early evening, in groups of three 
strikes, to provide a rhythm for citizens to pray the Ave Maria.1 Although there is no evidence of 
Edward and his entourage attending St. Donatian?s, the church would have been conspicuous 
both visually and by reputation: it was the most striking feature of the urban landscape, and 
maintained a dominant role in Bruges? civic life through its noble parishioners and impressive 
collection of relics.2 The church also held the highest ceremonial status given that it always 
provided the sacrament used in general processions through the city3 which by 1470 were a 
monthly occurrence.4 Such occasions would have been visually arresting, too, featuring banners 
painted by Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling.5 
St. Donatian?s was also the church in Bruges that was patronized more than any other by 
the Dukes of Burgundy,6 and in the fifteenth century its parishioners included all members of the 
 
1 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 3. 
2 Andrew Brown and Hendrik Callewier, ?Religious Practices, c.1200?1500,? in 
Medieval Bruges: c. 850?1550, eds. Andrew Brown and Jan Dumolyn (Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 2018), 330. 
3 Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion, 93. 
4 Ibid., 79. 
5 Strohm, ?Music, Ritual, and Painting,? 30. 
6 Brown, ?Bruges and the Burgundian ?Theatre-State?,? 579. 
             62 
Burgundian court.7 The geographical parish, however, only extended to the Burg, the square in 
which the church was situated. The church?s clergy had only light pastoral duties, allowing them 
plenty of time for the liturgy.8 In the latter half of the fifteenth century St. Donatian?s Church had 
the leading polyphonic ensemble of men and boys in Bruges, if not in Europe,9 likely to have 
been impressive even to a royal guest like Edward. With its substantial roster of thirteen boy 
choristers, all given training in reading polyphonic notation, and around twelve professional 
adult singers, the musical program at St. Donatian?s is the one most likely to have influenced 
Edward?s choral reforms on his return to England.10 
 
 
The Polyphonic Choir of Men and Boys  
The singing tradition at St. Donatian?s already had a significant history by 1470, which included 
more than half a century of men and boys singing polyphony together. An account roll from 
1251?52 mentions the positions of organist, succentor and rector scholarum, while an 
endowment for eight boy choristers was made as early as 1312.11 St. Donatian?s employed adult 
singers in positions known as clerkships, and by the late fifteenth century, these numbered 
 
7 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 11. 
8 Ibid., 12. 
9 Hendrik Callewier, ?The Singers of the Bruges Churches and the Musical Chapel of the 
Dukes of Burgundy,? in Staging the Court of Burgundy, eds. Wim Blockmans, Till-Holger 
Borchert, Nele Gabriels, Johan Oosterman, and Anne van Oosterwijk (Turnhout, Belgium: 
Brepols Publishers, 2013), 216. 
10 The modelling of one choir on another is not unheard of: one example is the choir of 
St.  Bavo?s in Ghent, which was assembled following the model of the choir and choirboys of St.  
Peter?s in Lille. See: Bruno Bouckaert, ?La Vie musicale ? Saint-Bavon: Le D?veloppement d?un 
ensemble musical professionnel apr?s 1536,? in La Cathedrale Saint-Bavon de Gand du Moyen 
Age au Baroque, ed. Bruno Bouckaert (Ghent: Ludion, 2000), 148?89. 
11 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 13. 
             63 
eighteen.12 The holders of these positions were normally lay clerks but included an increasing 
number of priests over the fifteenth century. While not all of the clerks were singers, from 
around 1440 onwards, the number from this group that was available to sing polyphony was 
around twelve.13 These musically able clerks were known as the socii de musica. 
A major development was the new endowment for singing boys at St. Donatian?s, created 
in 1421, which was in part a response to the depleted value of the funding from 1312.14 This new 
endowment was given so that four of the boys, known as chorales, could learn and perform 
polyphonic music. Strohm argues that funds given in 1415 and 1417 for music at specific 
liturgies involving the boy choristers suggest that polyphony was already generally performed by 
a mixture of men and boys at St. Donatian?s, and that the 1421 endowment simply formalized 
this practice.  
The 1421 endowment is a useful document for the purposes of this study because it gives 
clear details of the boys? responsibilities. The main duty of the four chorales was to sing a 
polyphonic mass every day. The Missa de Salve,15 dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was to be sung 
in the Lady Chapel situated behind the choir. The boys would be joined in this by the succentor, 
and although it is not mentioned in the rubric, presumably also by some of the church?s clerks, as 
was the case in a similar foundation set up in 1457 at Cambrai Cathedral. In addition to this daily 
duty, the chorales were also required to attend daily high mass and vespers, and to sing 
polyphony at those services on appropriate feast days. Strohm argues that the 1421 endowment 
 
12 Ibid., 13. 
13 Ibid., 26. 
14 Ibid., 22. 
15 So called because it is a votive mass for the Virgin Mary beginning with 
the introit or entrance chant Salve sancta parens. 
             64 
at St. Donatian?s is likely to have been transformative for the choral life in the region, as Philip 
the Good?s subsequent foundations at St. Peter?s Collegiate Church in Lille and the Sainte-
Chapelle in Dijon appear to have taken it as a model.16 
One aspect of the endowment that seems farsighted and even sophisticated was that in 
addition to the four boys who were recruited to sing polyphony, funding was also provided for 
nine refectionales or schoolboys.17 The duties of these boys were also specified: they were to 
receive training from the succentor in the recitation of the matins18 psalms as a minimum. Then, 
those who showed potential were also to be trained in discant and counterpoint, that is to say, the 
fundamentals of singing polyphony. In this way the refectionales could serve as reserves to the 
four choirboys tasked with singing the daily Missa de Salve and ensure that there was always a 
full team of trebles available for that purpose. 
The choral forces at St. Donatian?s in the years around 1470 would therefore have 
included both thirteen singing boys (four chorales with polyphonic duties and nine more junior 
refectionales) and around twelve adult singers among the socii de musica. The size of the 
ensemble at St. Donatian?s is one possible connection to Edward?s redesign of the choir at St. 
George?s Windsor on his return to England. While the choir at Windsor had previously included 
six singing boys, from 1475 onwards the number of choristers was increased, reaching thirteen in 
1482. In the same time period, the number of lay clerks was increased from four to thirteen.19 
Thus the new group of singers at St. George?s Windsor came to be of very similar proportions to 
the choir of St. Donatian?s in Bruges. Even before this, the first choir to have a significant 
 
16 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 22 and 94. 
17 Ibid., 22. 
18 A nighttime worship service of the office. 
19 Bowers, ?The Music and Musical Establishment of St. George?s Chapel,? 199?200. 
             65 
change in scale after Edward retook his throne was that of York Minster, where the existing team 
of seven choristers was increased to twelve.20 Here, the influence of Edward?s brother Richard, 
who had accompanied him in exile, is conceivable. Edward appointed Richard as Lord President 
of the Council of the North in 1472, to administer Northern England, and we know he secured 
funding for the Vicars Choral at York Minster in 1484.21 
Edward?s reforms at St. George?s Windsor from 1475 also seem to have coincided with 
the boy choristers there singing polyphony for the first time. There is no indication of this in 
previous decades, when the boys? contribution to the Lady mass is thought to have extended only 
to chant and improvised descant.22 As late as 1468, a new duty for the boys was added, but this 
only involved singing a plainsong antiphon.23 However, evidence from musical sources from this 
period suggests that the polyphonic repertoire at Windsor would have included the boy choristers 
from at least the 1480s. In 1479, the composer Walter Lambe was appointed as a lay clerk at 
Windsor, serving intermittently in this role until at least 1504. Lambe?s surviving works, which 
are all found in the Eton Choirbook, make use of up to six voice parts and cover a full three-
octave range. There is little doubt that they were composed with the combined scope of the men 
and boys of St. George?s Windsor in mind.24 
 
 
 
 
20 Bowers, ?To Chorus from Quartet,? 31. 
21 Richard Barrie Dobson, Church and Society in the Medieval North of England 
(London: Hambledon Press, 1996), 246. 
22 Bowers, ?The Music and Musical Establishment of St. George?s Chapel,? 193. 
23 Ibid., 194. 
24 Ibid., 208?10. 
             66 
Recruitment, Training, Income, and Career Prospects  
At St. Donatian?s the successful maintenance of a leading polyphonic choir required active 
recruitment. To find new choirboys, agents were sent out across Flanders and neighboring 
Brabant to scout young singing talent, covering a radius of around fifty miles around Bruges. 
Adult singers were drawn from a wider area, even if the majority came from Flanders itself. In 
the second half of the fifteenth century, singers were recruited to St. Donatian?s from ?s-
Hertogenbosch, Antwerp, Ghent, Courtrai and Cambrai, as well as others formerly attached to 
the courts of Brabant, Savoy, the Queen of France and the Holy Roman Emperor.25 
The training and experience that singers received at St. Donatian?s was considered 
sufficiently valuable that the choir?s members became highly desirable musicians elsewhere. 
Between c.1450 and c.1470, this began to mean that former clerks of St. Donatian?s went on to 
illustrious international careers.26 One prominent example of this is Jean Cordier, who Pamela 
Starr describes as ?the most widely known and famous musician of his time.?27 The first of 
Cordier?s appointments was as a clerk at St. Donatian?s in 1460,28 and Starr argues that he is 
likely to have gained his early musical education as a choirboy there, as it was common for 
musicians to receive their training and first professional job at the same institution.29 Cordier left 
Bruges in 1467 for a post with the Medici family and to sing in the Baptistery choir in Florence. 
He subsequently held positions in most of the leading choirs of the day: the papal court, Naples, 
 
25 Callewier, ?The Singers of the Bruges Churches,? 216. 
26 Callewier, ??What You Do on the Sly? Will Be Deemed Forgiven,? 89. 
27 Pamela F. Starr, ?Musical Entrepreneurship in 15th-Century Europe,? Early Music 32, 
no. 1 (2004): 119. 
28 Starr, ?Musical Entrepreneurship,? 120. 
29 Ibid. Barbara Haggh-Huglo suggest that in the case of Brussels and Cambrai this was 
not the case, as boy choristers went on to university and then had careers elsewhere. 
             67 
and Milan, before returning to the Burgundian court chapel in the 1480s.30 Although Cordier?s 
career was remarkable by any standards, his was not an isolated case: in the second half of the 
fifteenth century, former Bruges singers can be traced to important Italian centers, such as Rome, 
Florence, Ferrara, Milan and Naples, the Aragonese court in Spain, and the courts of the King of 
Hungary and the Duke of Savoy.31 Singers from Bruges must therefore have had a reputation 
across Europe, in large part due to the polyphonic program at St. Donatian?s. 
The status of St. Donatian?s choir is also revealed by its increasing use by the Burgundian 
Court chapel choir as a feeder institution. Before 1450, the Burgundian court chapel choir had 
tended to recruit singers formerly employed by the Count of Flanders and the papal chapel, as 
well as from Paris and from cathedral schools in northern France. The more successful of these 
singers were then sometimes rewarded with prebends at St. Donatian?s. But later in the century, 
from around 1460, St. Donatian?s began to be a supplier of court singers. As Hendrik Callewier 
summarizes, ?in 1470, no less than eight members of the chapel, out of a total number of twenty-
nine, had previously sung in the church of St. Donatian. Under Charles the Bold, the percentage 
of ?Bruges singers? in the court chapel continuously hovered around twenty to twenty-five per 
cent.?32 
In these aspects of training and recruitment there is a further alignment with Edward?s 
subsequent choir reforms at Windsor, where from 1475 onwards there are signs of an increased 
consideration for and investment in the recruitment and training of choir members. A major 
change was the appointment at Michaelmas in 1477 of a Supervisor of the Choristers.33 The 
 
30 Ibid., 121?2. 
31 Callewier, ?The Singers of the Bruges Churches,? 216. 
32 Ibid., 217. 
33 Bowers, ?The Music and Musical Establishment of St. George?s Chapel,? 203. 
             68 
creation of this position, whose holder assumed all practical responsibilities relating to the 
choristers, allowed the Instructor of the Choristers to concentrate entirely on music. 
Documentation of the training the choristers received survives on the wall of what was the 
choristers? schoolroom at Windsor ? a painted teaching aid from 1480. The notes on the five-line 
staff appear to have been intended to help the choristers learn features of mensural notation, 
because they include some of the more complex combinations of note values.34 
Recruitment, too, became a major concern at Windsor. Edward issued its chapter a 
license, almost certainly without precedent, to recruit choirboys who had received their early 
training elsewhere.35 There are also records of choir men being recruited to Windsor from as far 
away as Salisbury and Arundel, which suggests a search radius even larger than that of St. 
Donatian?s choir.36 And Windsor also became a feeder choir for the Chapel Royal: William 
Edmunds, for example, was a clerk (1477) and Master of the Choristers (1479) at St. George?s, 
before becoming a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal.37 This practice of vigorous and thorough 
recruiting was also taken up by Richard on becoming king: in September 1484 he gave a 
commission to one of the gentlemen of the Chapel Royal ?to take and seize for the King all 
singing men and children expert in the science of music, within all places of the realm, as well in 
cathedral churches, colleges, chapels, houses of religion, and all other franchised or exempt 
places, or elsewhere.?38 
 
 
34 Ibid., 204?5. Bowers provides photographs of the wall on 205. 
35 Ibid., 204. 
36 Bowers, ?The Music and Musical Establishment of St. George?s Chapel,? 204 and 201. 
37 Kisby, ?The Early-Tudor Royal Household Chapel,? 91?2. 
38 W. H. Grattan Flood, ?New Light on Early Tudor Composers: XXVII. Gilbert 
Banaster,? The Musical Times 64, no. 963 (1923): 319?20. 
             69 
The Power of Professional Musicians 
The leading musician among the socii de musica at St. Donatian?s during Edward?s time in 
Bruges was Gilles Joye. Joye was an example of a musician who had migrated from Courtrai, 
some forty miles to the south, where there had been a polyphonic tradition since at least 1438. 
As Joye was already ordained, an exception had to be made so that he could become a clericus 
installatus at St. Donatian?s in 1448, as singers were not usually allowed to be priests.39 
Administrative documents from the 1450s are littered with references to Joye?s crimes and 
misdemeanors: composing and singing ribald verses about his colleagues at a feast, vandalism in 
the city?s streets, frequenting brothels, kidnapping women, refusing to carry out liturgical duties, 
and abusing his colleagues verbally and physically.40 Joye could have been dismissed for any of 
these transgressions, but his musical skill was of such importance to the chapter that they kept 
him in his position.41 
One of the attractions of singing at St. Donatian?s was the chance to earn a good income: 
this was achieved both through the distributions (per-service payments for singing polyphony) 
and from the incomes and property from chantries and benefices.42 Joye was certainly an 
example of a singer who achieved this, becoming wealthy enough to be able to commission Hans 
Memling to paint his portrait in 1472.43 Having abandoned his position at St. Donatian?s in 1453 
in favor of becoming a benefice at Cleves, Joye used this career progress as leverage when 
negotiating a return to St. Donatian?s. Joye received a new prebend at St. Donatian?s in 1461 and 
 
39 Callewier, ??What You Do on the Sly? Will Be Deemed Forgiven,? 91. 
40 Ibid., 93?4. 
41 Ibid., 94?5. 
42 Callewier, ?The Singers of the Bruges Churches,? 216. 
43 Strohm, ?Music, Ritual, and Painting,? 42. 
             70 
was then appointed a clerc in the Burgundian court chapel in 1462. When he had to withdraw 
from the duke?s service in 1468, due to illness, Joye spent more time at St. Donatian?s where he 
was given important administrative roles from 1468?71.44 During this period Joye spent a 
record-breaking amount of the fabric?s budget on the copying of polyphonic music. Some of the 
copies could have been Joye?s own music; he was a renowned composer in his lifetime, and 
some of his compositions survive.45 Strohm attributes the two masses in the Lucca Choirbook 
based on the song ?O rosa bella? to Joye.46 Callewier argues that Strohm?s attribution is 
supported by the knowledge that a woman named Rosabella lived with Joye in the 1450s, a state 
of affairs that brought him into conflict with the St. Donatian?s chapter.47 
 
Polyphonic Repertoire at St. Donatian?s 
All of the polyphonic music books belonging to St. Donatian?s appear to have been destroyed in 
the sixteenth century, so we are left to deduce what we can from account books and the 
endowments of the period. In 1468, the accounts describe the use of polyphony for the 
Magnificat for the first time, and we know that by this point there were eighteen such settings 
already in the church?s choirbooks.48 From 1468 to 1471 the accounts also document the fruits of 
Joye?s interest in polyphonic music: the copying of thirty-three mass settings. These were carried 
out by the scribe Martinus Colins,49 who with four other singers had in 1468 threatened to leave 
for a new position in the service of the bishop of Li?ge, whose city had burned to the ground 
 
44 Callewier, ??What You Do on the Sly? Will Be Deemed Forgiven,? 97. 
45 Ibid., 104. 
46 Strohm, The Rise of European Music, 125?6 and 260?1. 
47 Callewier, ??What You Do on the Sly? Will Be Deemed Forgiven,? 95. 
48 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 29. 
49 Ibid., 30. 
             71 
twice by the Burgundians in the past three years but had begun a period of recovery. The other 
singers were replaced, but Colins was persuaded to stay with a substantial increase in his salary, 
demonstrating his value to the chapter.50  
 
Edward?s Opportunities to Hear the St. Donatian?s Choir 
Edward?s opportunities to hear the choir of St. Donatians?s would have included the frequent 
feast days for which, by 1470, music was prescribed as part of the church?s celebrations. For 
example, from the end of the fourteenth century onwards there were polyphonic masses for 
Saints Donatian (October 14), Leonard (November 6), and Machut (November 15) sung at St. 
Donatian?s Church.51 Edward may still have been in the Hague on these dates, but there were 
also feasts with significant endowments while the king was most likely in Bruges such as those 
for St. Anthony the Great (January 17) and the Feast of the Purification (February 2). The king 
would have had other opportunities to hear the socii de musica of St. Donatian?s, as its members 
were in demand not only in the liturgy at their home church, but in polyphonic performance in a 
variety of other contexts across the city. By 1470 their regular engagements to sing polyphonic 
masses included those at Our Lady?s Collegiate Church, the churches of St. Walburga and St. 
James, and the Augustinian Abbey ?ten Eeckhout.? 
 
Conclusion 
As Strohm puts it, in the fifteenth century Bruges and the Low Countries ?fostered a vigorous 
musical practice second to none at the time.?52 Towards the end of this period, St. Donatian?s 
 
50 Ibid., 27. 
51 Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion, 105. 
52 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 31. 
             72 
choir seems to have been one of the region?s leading polyphonic ensembles, and therefore 
arguably one of the finest in Europe. There are numerous contributory factors to its success: the 
forward-thinking design of its endowment for choirboys, its arrangements for recruitment and 
training of singers, its offer of lucrative careers both in Bruges and beyond. That the choir was 
highly regarded is borne out by the demand for its singers in Flanders and further afield. Just as 
the years before 1470 saw an intensification of the musical activity in Charles? the Bold?s chapel, 
a similar trend can be observed at St. Donatian?s. Here it is the large outlay on the copying of 
polyphonic music ordered by Gilles Joye that suggests a peak in musical activity, just in time for 
Edward?s stay in Bruges. 
So ubiquitous were the socii of St. Donatian?s in the musical scene of late-fifteenth-
century Bruges that it is hard to imagine how Edward and Richard could have avoided them 
during their stay. There are hints in Edward?s arrangements at St. George?s Windsor that he was 
aware of their singing from hearing them in person or by reputation, given that he would soon 
increase the number of singers in his own premier choir to replicate almost exactly the numbers 
of choristers and clerks at St. Donatian?s, together with his introduction of a similarly rigorous 
approach to training and recruitment. With St. Donatian?s choir having almost fifty years of 
experience singing polyphony and a status outmatching any comparable English choir before 
1472, it is easy to see why it should have been an apt model.  
  
             73 
Chapter 6 
Conclusion 
 
In the preceding chapters I have presented evidence that supports four central findings. The first 
is that Edward IV?s exile in Burgundian territory coincided with a highpoint in musical activity 
both at the ducal court and in Bruges, which were locations visited by the king. In both places he 
would have been able to witness some of the leading European exponents of polyphonic music. 
The second is that there are numerous apparent connections between the organization of the 
leading choirs in Burgundian territory and the subsequent reforms of English ensembles. The 
most influential ensembles appear have been the choir of St. Donatian?s in Bruges and the ducal 
chapel choir. The third finding is that there is evidence both in England and Burgundian territory 
of a trend of choirboys being established in groups of six in the period from 1450 to 1490, 
especially in situations where their role involved polyphony. And finally, Edward and Louis de 
Gruuthuse?s oratories, built in the 1470s, seem to be at the center of a wider late-medieval trend 
of the construction of such spaces by Anglo-Burgundian music patrons. 
 
An Influential Polyphonic Tradition  
The timing of Edward?s exile was serendipitous, not simply in terms of its coincidence with 
Gruuthuse?s oratory, but also with the flurry of activity related directly to polyphonic 
performance. I have presented numerous signifiers of this, but three stand out: one in 
performance practice, one in ensemble design and one in the expansion of repertoire. First is the 
Salve or lof tradition of devotional concerts which had started in 1468 at Our Lady?s Collegiate 
Church. These were sung by the succentor and the boys after vespers on all Sundays and Marian 
feasts with organ and two or three extra singers from the socii de musica of St. Donatian?s 
Church. The second is Charles the Bold?s preoccupation with enlarging and organizing his choir 
             74 
in the years 1467?70, including his 1469 ordinance with its instructions on the requirements for 
performing polyphony. And the third is the unprecedented spending on the copying of 
polyphonic music at St. Donatian?s Church in the years 1468?71 under the musician and 
administrator Gilles Joye. 
St. Donatian?s Church in Bruges, which had thirteen choristers and around twelve singing 
men by 1470, could arguably have been the model for Edward?s choral reforms at Windsor, as 
much as any homegrown ensemble. And the opportunities Edward would have had during his 
exile to hear this choir sing at Lady mass or at feasts suggest one way in which the performance 
practice and organizational design of this leading European choir could have been transmitted to 
English musical culture. Considering that the king was not present at the meeting where he 
became a Knight of the Golden Fleece in 1468 nor at his sister?s Bruges wedding celebrations in 
in the same year, Edward?s winter in Burgundian territory would have been his principal chance 
to experience the music of Bruges and the Burgundian court, the finest of its kind in northern 
Europe, in person. 
 
Choir Reforms 
The features of the Burgundian choirs which seem to have been adopted later by English 
ensembles include large polyphonic groups of sixteen or more singers, an increased prevalence 
of boys being trained to sing polyphony, and an emphasis on the recruitment of both boys and 
men. All three of these traits are discernible in the choir of St. Donatian?s in Bruges by the mid-
fifteenth century, and thereafter became part of the operations of the choir at St. George?s 
Windsor, which Edward modernized from 1477 to 1482. Evidence of similar developments can 
be seen in a number of other English choirs of the period, such as those of the Chapel Royal, 
             75 
Lady Chapel choirs at Winchester and Westminster, and two new foundations, Middleham and 
Barnard Castle, established by Richard Duke of Gloucester, the king?s brother, who had joined 
him in exile.53 
 
Six-Chorister Groups 
In the Burgundian realm, the groups of choirboys established to sing polyphony in the 1420s, 
such as those at St. Donatian?s in Bruges, St. Peter?s Collegiate Church in Lille, and the Sainte-
Chappelle in Dijon, had four places for choristers. But from the middle of the century a trend 
emerged towards groups of six, established at Tournai Cathedral (1450), St. Gudula?s Brussels 
(1466), Sts. Guido and Peter in Anderlecht (both 1481), and St. Donatian?s in Bruges, which was 
confirmed in 1484 after a delay of over a decade. I argue that this Burgundian trend is reflected 
in the prescription in Charles the Bold?s ordinance of 1469 for six ?hautes voix? when 
performing polyphony. 
In the years after Edward?s exile, examples of this six-chorister grouping can also be 
found in England. A possible explanation for this is that the king and his entourage experienced 
this phenomenon in Burgundy and co-opted it for their own choirs. For example, Richard, the 
Duke of Gloucester, was responsible for foundations specifying six choristers at Middleham in 
1478, where the statutes specify polyphonic duties, and at Barnard Castle in the same year, 
although this latter example did not come to fruition. In England, there are also examples of 
 
53 Roger Bowers, ?To Chorus from Quartet: The Performing Resource for English 
Church Polyphony, c. 1390?1559,? in English Choral Practice, 1400?1650, ed. John Morehen 
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 31; Bowers, ?Choral Institutions," 6031; 
Bowers, ?The Music and Musical Establishment of St. George's Chapel,? 199?200. 
             76 
choirs being reformed with six boy choristers such as the Lady Chapel choirs of Worcester 
Cathedral in 1479 and Westminster Abbey in 1480, and of Jesus College Rotherham in 1483.  
 
Anglo-Burgundian Music Patrons as Oratory Builders 
This study is focused principally on Edward?s exile in Bruges, but I argue that connections 
between the upper-level oratories built by Edward and his host Gruuthuse are part of a wider 
network of related examples in England and Burgundy. Firstly, there seems to have been an 
intense period of oratory building in Flanders from the 1450s to the 1470s, with examples built 
by the Burgundian dukes at the Rihour Palace in Lille and the Prince?s Palace in Bruges, as well 
as Gruuthuse?s model at Our Lady?s Collegiate Church in Bruges.54 I argue that not only did this 
tradition influence Edward?s decision to include an oratory in his new church at Windsor in the 
1470s, but that the function of this feature of church design was imitated elsewhere in England in 
subsequent decades by patrons who had connections to the king or to Windsor. Examples of this 
can be found in the oratory overlooking the chapel of Christ?s College in Cambridge, which was 
built for Margaret Beaufort, and that constructed by Bishop Edmund Audley with a view of the 
Lady Chapel at Hereford Cathedral.55 My argument for the function of these constructions being 
related to music is based on the evidence that their creators, in England and the Burgundian 
territory, were all involved in the increase and improvement of resources for choral performance 
during this period. 
 
 
 
54 Maekelberg and De Jonge, ?The Prince?s Court at Bruges,? 9; Nuechterlein, ?The 
Domesticity of Sacred Space,? 69. 
55 Oakes, ?In Pursuit of Heaven,? 206; Pevsner, Cambridgeshire, 50. 
             77 
Main Outcome and Implications for Future Research 
Historians have sometimes explained the rise of polyphonic choral music in England as an 
insular phenomenon which evolved from the singing of Lady mass in the Lady Chapel into a 
fuller choral tradition at the end of the fifteenth century.56 However, the reforms to significant 
English choirs at Westminster Abbey, Worcester Priory, Winchester Priory, York Minster, and 
Bristol Abbey that took place from 1472 to 1486 suggest a revolution more than an evolution.57 
The importance of Edward?s reformed choir at Windsor, which by 1482 was made up of thirteen 
choristers and thirteen lay clerks is undisputed, and Bowers describes these developments as ?the 
seed-corn of the English choral tradition.?58 My argument is that this seed of the English choral 
tradition was one imported over the sea from Burgundian territory by Edward and his courtiers, 
in the same way that they brought in physical goods and intellectual property via the same trade 
route. 
Two parts of my thesis have implications for future research. Firstly, the phenomenon I 
have identified of the six-choirboy team in polyphonic choirs is worthy of further study as an 
aspect of emergent performance practice in the late-fifteenth century. While there was a group of 
this size Windsor that predates those discussed above, there is no indication that this ensemble 
sang anything beyond chant and improvised discant.59 Therefore, it would be worthwhile to 
cross-reference all of the ensembles above with what is known about their polyphonic repertory 
in these years, and to look for connections between the design of these boy chorister cohorts and 
their musical function.  
 
56 One example of this is: Tim Tatton-Brown, ?How Lady Chapels Gave Birth to 
Cathedral Choirs,? The Church Times, April 29, 2016. 
57 Bowers, ?To Chorus from Quartet,? 31. 
58 Bowers, ?The Music and Musical Establishment of St. George?s Chapel,? 202. 
59 Ibid., 194. 
             78 
Secondly, I propose that the similarities in design and function between Gruuthuse and 
Edward?s oratories, and the fact that they were installed during a period of choral growth, imply 
that such oratories would be appropriate for case studies of the relationship between singers and 
listeners in the decades around 1500. These could be part of a wider exploration of the 
polyphonic choirs, patrons and oratories in this period, in the mold of the experimental work of 
Deborah Howard and Laura Moretti on sound and space in Renaissance Venice.60  
A study of choirs, patrons and oratories should consider which listener was of greatest 
importance, as Howard and Moretti?s work has often done. This approach has produced excellent 
results. Howard and Moretti have examined the musical consequences of the move, in around 
1530, of the liturgical position of Doge Gritti from a position in the center of the basilica of St. 
Mark?s to one in the chancel. They explored the consequences of this for music and musicians, 
using the methods of ?sonic archeology?: archival work combined with musical experiments and 
acoustical measurements. Through this work they have identified a link to the increased use of 
antiphonal choir galleries in the chancel in the years after the doge?s change of location.61 A 
similar study of oratories, choir and listeners in England and the Burgundian Low Countries 
around 1500 using the same methods would surely yield interesting results. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
60 Deborah Howard and Laura Moretti, Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice: 
Architecture, Music, Acoustics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). 
61 Howard and Moretti, Sound and Space, 33?6. 
             79 
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