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Gilles de Bins dit Binchois (also Binchoys; – 20 September 1460) was a Franco-Flemish composer and singer of early Renaissance music. A central figure of the Burgundian School, Binchois is renowned a melodist and miniaturist; he generally avoided large scale works, and is most admired for his shorter secular . Contemporary musicologists generally rank his importance below his colleague Guillaume Du Fay and the English composer John Dunstaple, but together the three were the most celebrated composers of the early European Renaissance.
Binchois was born in Mons (modern-day Belgium) to an upper-class family from Binche. His youth is largely unknown, although early chorister training is likely; by late 1419 he had obtained a local organist post. By 1423 he was in Lille and probably a soldier under the Englishman William de la Pole, eventually in Paris and Hainaut. Sometime during the 1420s, Binchois settled in the culturally thriving court of Burgundy under Philip the Good, where he became a subdeacon and was awarded numerous . He retired to Soignies in 1453 amid a substantial courtly pension, dying in 1460.
It is thought that considerably more of his sacred music survives than secular music, creating a "paradoxical image" of the composer. Reflecting on his style, the Encyclopædia Britannica comments that "Binchois cultivated the gently subtle rhythm, the suavely graceful melody, and the smooth treatment of dissonance of his English contemporaries".
Nothing for certain is known about Binchois until 8 December 1419, when he is known to have been the organist at Ste Waudru in Mons. It is possible that Gilles Binchois received an early musical education near the court of Mons, and like other composers of his time, he probably trained as a chorister in his youth, perhaps at St Germain. An account from (1880) which refers to the chorister Jean de Binche at Cambrai Cathedral has often been misinterpreted as referring to Binchois. There is no evidence that Binchois was a chorister at Cambrai in his youth. As is known, he never received an academic degree of any kind.
Records from 28 July 1423 indicates that he soon moved to Lille. Around this time he may have been a soldier, as indicated by a line in the funeral motet Deploration for Binchois, composed in his memory by the composer Johannes Ockeghem. Binchois might have served under the Englishman William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, who was in France for the Hundred Years' War; Binchois is assumed to have been in Paris, alongside the composer Estienne Grossin. This association is evidenced by a 1426 document which records that the Duke of Suffolk commissioned the otherwise unknown rondel Ainsi que a la foiz m’y souvient from a 'Binchoiz'. At some point Binchois went with William to Hainaut.
Among the residents of the court was the painter Jan van Eyck, who, according to the art historian Erwin Panofsky, may have portrayed Binchois in the Léal Souvenir portrait, though there is no widespread agreement for this. Binchois was associated with the leading composer of his day, Guillaume Du Fay. They likely met, alongside the poet Martin le Franc, during a meeting at Chambéry of the Burgundian and Savoy courts in February 1434. It was probably here that Le Franc wrote his famous Le champion des dames poem, which depicts the two composers and blind Burgundian vielle players. The only certain meeting of the composers was in March 1449, when Du Fay resided with Binchois in Mons for a convocation of canons. Aside from Du Fay, important composer contemporaries of the region included Hugo de Lantins and Arnold de Lantins.
The Burgundian chapel choir was unique in allowing its members to become clergy without being ordained as a priest; in 1437 Binchois became a subdeacon. Probably due to Philip's favor, he held for at least four churches until his death: St Donatian, Bruges (from 7 January 1430); Ste Waudru, Mons (from 17 May 1437); St Vincent, Soignies (from 1452); and St Pierre, Cassel (from 21 May 1459). He was also made honorary court secretary in 1437 by Philip, who paid for a now-lost work by him on 29 May 1438, Passions en nouvelle maniere. It is possible that Binchois had some experience in medicine, since he attended to a duchess's toothache in July 1437, receiving 30 French sol. The choir's attendance records are fairly thorough, and indicate that Binchois did not travel much on his own.
On 20 September 1460 Binchois died in Soignies; his will mentions otherwise unknown family members, including his brothers Andri de Binch and Ernoul de Binch. He was buried in St. Vincent's collegiate church. Upon his death Ockeghem wrote a deploration, Mort, tu as navré de ton dart; its opening appears to quote an otherwise unknown chanson by Binchois. Fallows has suggested that Du Fay composed the rondeau En triumphant in 1460 for his colleague's death, since it seemingly references two songs by Binchois.
Most commentators agree that Binchois was not a progressive composer. The musicologist Reinhard Strohm concludes that although he "earned his enormous reputation in the one genre in which he excelled as a composer ... this master of melody and courtly performer apparently does not explore the depths of the art". Binchois utilized a limited range of techniques, favoring older melodic styles that echoed the 12th-century courtly love () tradition of the and trouvères. His genre preference was equally conservative, favoring small-scale works over more fashionable and cantus firmus masses based on secular tunes. This preference led to musicologist Anthony Pryer to describe him as a "supreme miniaturist". Indeed only a single large-scale work of his survives, the incomplete isorhythmic motet Nove cantum melodie (1481).
Binchois' treatment of was more forward-looking; he occasionally approached the dominant scale-degree and leading-tone with a tonality of the later common practice period. His progressive use of dissonance has also incited much discussion—he often embraced moments of dissonant part writing, even when it was "easily avoided". Joan A. Boucher also noted that Binchois' wide range use of the bass voice was unique for his time.
Like Du Fay, Binchois was deeply influenced by the contenance angloise style of John Dunstaple and Lionel Power, which uniquely emphasized the third and sixth intervals and often highlighted duets within larger textures. Although Binchois probably never visited England, the Burgundian court had good relations with the English, with whom they established both diplomatic and cultural links; the Renaissance scholar Gordon Campbell notes that Binchois was "ideally placed to absorb and reflect styles from across the English Channel". The English influence was such that three settings of by Power and Dunstable, along with a motet by Standley, were long-misattributed to Binchois. Strohm cautions that this influence was not prevalent enough to consider any of Binchois' works to be English in style or imitating an English model: "he followed his own, aural version of contenance angloise".
The lyrics Binchois set were often by prominent French poet contemporaries, such as Charles, Duke of Orléans, Alain Chartier and Christine de Pizan. He chiefly prioritized serious courtly subjects, unlike his contemporaries who wrote spoof songs and celebratory songs for May Day and New Year's Day; the combinative chanson "Filles a marier/Se tu t’en marias", which cautions against marriage, is an exception. Binchois' method of text setting was often unique from his peers; his melodies are generally independent of the poem's rhyme scheme. Scholars note that his tendency to favor Musical form over poetic form has made their combination unpredictable in his works. This is a stark departure from the careful music-text balance of Guillaume Du Fay's compositions. Fallows suggests that this approach is an attempt to counter the strict structural rules of the formes fixes, while Slavin describes this attitude as more medieval than Humanism-Renaissance.
In addition to not prioritizing poetic structure, Binchois heavily emphasized musical symmetry. The musicologist Wolfgang Rehm was the first to note that numerous Binchois songs, particularly early works, are symmetrically constructed in their length and the location of their middle cadence. Rehm also observed that in five-line rondeaux, Binchois added a sixth non-texted musical line, so that the music remained symmetrical. In works such as the rondeau "Amours et souvenir", abba poems are offset by an abab musical passage. As such, Binchois stands out from other Renaissance composers in that "poetic form of a song cannot always be deduced correctly from the music alone".
It is generally assumed that considerably more of Binchois' total sacred music survives than secular, creating a "paradoxical image" of a composer best known for the latter. Regardless, the ease at which his secular output can be analyzed—both stylistically and chronologically—does not transfer here. The various church forms are treated distinctly, often without stylistic parallels. There are also departures from Binchois' secular characteristics: very few Burgundian cadences (octave-leap cadences), less major prolation, more selective tempus perfectum diminutum and less regular symmetry.
Counterpoint was not a priority to Binchois, who instead emphasized text declamation and musical contour. Thus his sacred output is often considered comparatively uninspired and routine; "severely practical" in the opinion of Pryer. Oftentimes the work's chant source is harmonized in a basic, "note-against-note" manner, with such harmony in the top voice, akin to the continental standard then. Homophony is his sacred texture of choice, typically in the fauxbourdon style, with melodies based on the Parisian rite—a then-fashionable approach in Burgundy. Fallows notes that even the simplistic counterpoint in his magnificats is more extreme in unremarkability than routine magnificats by Du Fay and Dunstaple. From these characteristics, Fallows considers Binchois' sacred works most similar to those of Johannes Brassart and Johannes de Limburgia.
His tunes appeared in copies decades after his death, and were often used as sources for Mass composition by later composers. About half of his extant secular music is found in the manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Canon. misc. 213.
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