Pierre Fontaine

While he was well known at the time, most of his music has probably been lost. All of his surviving music is secular, and all his compositions are chansons.

He was born in Rouen and is presumed to have had his early musical training there. By 1403 he was a singer at the large and splendid chapel of Philip the Bold, and after it was disbanded in 1404 he became a clerk at Ste. Chapelle in Bourges, where he served at least until 1407. He was a singer at the court chapel of Burgundy when it was reconstituted, after a period of inactivity, by John the Fearless, the new Duke of Burgundy in 1415. When John died in 1419 Fontaine left the chapel and went to northern Italy, joining the singers in the chapel of Pope Martin V, where he probably remained through the early 1420s. Around the end of the decade he came back to Burgundy, where he sang in the chapel yet again, this time under Philip the Good, and where he remained at least until 1447. No record of his death survives, but a replacement for him was hired in 1451.

• A son plaisir volentiers serviroye (rondeau) • De bien amer (rondeau) • J’ayme bien celui qui s'en va (contains the performance indication for slide trumpet in the lowest part) (rondeau) • Mon cuer pleure (rondeau) • Pastourelle en un vergier (ballade) • Pour vous tenir/Mon doulx amy • Sans faire de vous departie (a separate arrangement of this piece, using the tenor as a basse danse has survived in a manuscript from Brussels which belonged to Margarete of Austria, granddaughter of Charles the Bold) • Fontaine a vous dire le voir