This thesis is an attempt to define and compare the styles of two English composers active early in the fifteenth century - John Dunstable and Leonel Power. The two are commonly confused in the surviving manuscript sources of their music and to date there has been no reliable method for the determination of authorship in cases of conflicting attribution. Part One of the investigation consists of an analysis of works which bear uncontradicted ascriptions. The information is used to set up a database for each of the composers. The analysis is largely computer-aided and covers aspects of form, pitch, range, chord structure, melodic structure, speed, text setting and cadence progressions. Part Two compares a variety of uncertain works against the databases and in each case employs the statistical method of Discriminant Analysis to calculate which of the two composers is more likely to be responsible for the composition. In all of the six pieces with ascriptions to both men, the results indicate the likely author to a probability of over 1.00. The data are also used to assess many anonymous pieces and mass pairs.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:358843 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Smith, Beverley Gaye |
| Publisher | University of Sheffield |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/1854/ |
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