The Roma (as a noun, singular Rom, plural Roma; sometimes Rrom, Rroma, Rromany people, Romany people, Romani people or Romanies) belong to many ethnic groups that appear in literature and folklore, and are often referred to as Gypsies or Gipsies. The Roma have their origins in India.
The Roma are still thought of as wandering nomads in the popular imagination, despite the fact that today the vast majority live in permanent housing.
This widely dispersed ethnic group lives across the world not only near Southern and Eastern Europe, but also in the Americas and the Middle East.
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Paparuda
Paparuda is a Romanian rain ritual, probably of pagan origin, performed in the spring and in times of severe drought.
A girl, wearing a skirt made of fresh green knitted vines and small branches, sings and dances through the streets of the village, stopping at every house, where the hosts pour water on her.
She is accompanied by the people of the village who dance and shout on the music. The custom has attributed a specific type of dance and a specific melody.
A similar Romanian rain ritual is the Caloian.
The name is probably derived from Perperuna, which in its turn is a Slavic (south slavic) goddess, or as Sorin Paliga suggests, is a divinity from the local Thracian substratum.
Like the Dodola (dudula, dudulica, dodolă in Romanian, dudulë in Albanian, tuntule in Greek, dudulya and didilya in South Slavic languages), which is another name for the same custom holding similar rituals, compared by Decev with Thracian anthroponyms (personal names) and toponyms (place names) (such as Doidalsos, Doidalses, Dydalsos, Dudis, Doudoupes, etc.) and argued by Paliga to be of Thracian origin, the Paparuda is found only at Romanians (păpărudă), Aromanians (pirpirună) and South Slavs (peperuda, perperuna).
The name of Dodola is possibly cognate with the Lithuanian word for thunder: dundulis.
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The Slavic peoples are a linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly in Europe. From the early 6th century they spread from their original homeland (most commonly thought to be in Eastern Europe) to inhabit most of eastern Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
Modern nations and ethnic groups called by the ethnonym "Slavs" are considerably genetically and culturally diverse and relations between them are varied, ranging from a sense of connection to feelings of mutual resentment.
Slavic peoples are classified into West Slavic (including Czechs, Poles, Slovaks and Sorbs), East Slavic (including Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians), and South Slavic (including Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenes).
The origin of the word Slav remains controversial. Excluding the ambiguous mention by Ptolemy of tribes Stavanoi and Soubenoi, the earliest references of "Slavs" under this name are from the 6th century AD. The word is written variously as Sklabenoi, Sklauenoi, or Sklabinoi in Byzantine Greek, and as Sclaueni, Sclauini, or Sthlaueni in Latin. The oldest documents written in Old Church Slavonic and dating from the 9th century attest slověne to describe the Slavs around Thessalonica. Other early attestations include Old Russian slověně "an East Slavic group near Novgorod," Slovutich "Dnieper river," and Serbian and Croatian Slavonica, a river.
Scholars such as Roman Jacobson and others link the name with the Slavic forms sláva "glory", "fame" or slovo "word, talk" (both akin to slušati "to hear" from the IE root *ḱlew-). Thus slověne would mean "people who speak (the same language)," i.e. people who understand each other, as opposed to the Slavic word for foreign nations, nemtsi, meaning "speechless people" (from Slavic němi - mute, silent, dumb). For example, the Polish word Niemcy means "Germans" or "Germany", as do the Serbian and Croatian words Nemci and Nijemci and the Russian and Bulgarian word Nemtsi.
There are two alternative scholarly theories as to the origin of the Slavs ethnonym, both very tentative: according to the first theory, it derives from a hypothetically reconstructed Proto-Indo-European *(s)lawos, cognate to Greek laós "population, people," which itself has no commonly accepted etymology. The second theory (forwarded by e.g. Max Vasmer) suggests that the word originated as a river name (compare the etymology of the Volcae), comparing it with such cognates as Latin cluere "to cleanse, purge", a root not known to have been continued in Slavic, however, and it appears in other languages with similar meanings (cf. Greek klyzein "to wash", Old English hlūtor "clean, pure", Old Norse hlér "sea", Welsh clir "clear, clean", Lithuanian šlúoti "to sweep").
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Wedding Song
Communal Lament
Solo Lament
Romania (dated: Rumania, Roumania; Romanian: România, IPA: [ro.mɨˈni.a]) is a country located in South-East Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea.
Almost all of the Danube Delta is located within its territory. It shares a border with Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova to the northeast, and Bulgaria to the south.
The territory's recorded history encompasses such eras as the Dacians, Roman Empire (leading to the development of Romanian language), Kingdom of Hungary, and Ottoman Empire.
[8404 Clavichord / 8400 Gypsies Romania / 8400 Dufay]
Franco-Flemish musician-theorist Guillaume Dufay (Du Fay, Du Fayt, left above, apparently about to slap five with buddy Giles Binchois) (August 5, 1397?/1400?, c. Beersel, near Brussels - November 27, 1474) was the central figure in the Burgundian School, and the most famous and influential mid-1400's European composer, a perception that has continued since. His music was copied, distributed and sung everywhere that polyphony had taken root, all the more impressive considering that this was just prior to the availability of music printing.
He was the illegitimate child of a priest and Marie Du Fayt, who moved with him to Cambrai early on, staying with a relative who was a canon of the cathedral. Dufay's talent was noticed by the cathedral authorities, who gave him thorough training. He studied with Rogier de Hesdin in the summer of 1409, and was listed as choirboy from that year to 1412, studying with Nicolas Malin, receiving a copy of Villedieu’s Doctrinale in 1411,
In June 1414, at 166, he had been given a benefice as chaplain at St. Géry, adjacent to Cambrai. Later that year he probably went to Konstanz, perhaps staying until 1418, before returning.
From November 1418 to 1420 he was a subdeacon at Cambrai Cathedral, leaving again in 1420 for Rimini, and possibly Pesaro, working for the Malatestas.
The ballade Resvellies vous et faites chiere lye, was written in 1423 for the marriage of Carlo Malatesta and Vittoria di Lorenzo Colonna (Carlo was a son of Malatesta dei Sonetti, Lord of Pesaro -- Vittoria was the niece of Pope Martin V).
The form is aabC for each stanza, with C being the refrain, emphasizing passages in the text which specifically refer to the couple being married.
Unter the Malatestas he met the composers Hugo and Arnold de Lantins, who were among the house musicians. In 1424 Dufay again returned to Cambrai, this time because of the illness and subsequent death of the relative canon benefactor.
By 1426, however, he had returned to Italy, now Bologna, where he worked for Cardinal Louis Aleman, becoming a deacon and, by 1428, a priest. Cardinal Aleman was driven out by the rival Canedolis that year, along with Dufay, who left for Rome, joining the Papal Choir, in service of Pope Martin V and, after 1431, Pope Eugene IV.
In 1434 he was appointed maistre de chappelle in Savoy, where he served Duke Amédée VIII; evidently he left Rome due to a crisis in papal finances, and to escape the uncertainty of the struggle between the papacy and the Council of Basel, which led to Eugene being driven out of the city.
Most of Dufay's motets were relatively early works, having been written by this point for specific occasion (rather than liturgical use) and he seems not to have written any during the last 30 years of life. They are complexly isorhythmic (isorhythms even occurring in all the voices), harkening back to medieval usages.
In 1435, Dufay was again in the the papal chapel, relocated to Florence, where, the next year on March 25, Dufay composed the festive motet Nuper rosarum flores, sung at the dedication of Brunelleschi's dome of the cathedral in Florence, Eugene's place of exile. This work, like others was carefully contrived to have a symbolic value, in this case with proportions supposedly exactly matching those of Solomon's Temple. Dufay probably took part in this performance, and an eyewitness account attests to the presence of numerous string and wind players, who filled the chamber with their sounds during the impressive ceremony.
In this time Dufay also began his long association with the d'Estes in Ferrara, with whom probably had become acquainted during the days with the Malatestas (Rimini and Ferrara are close, and the two families were related by marriage). Dufay composed at least one ballade for Niccolò III, Marquis of Ferrara, and visited in 1437. When Niccolò died in 1441, the next Marquis maintained contact with Dufay, continued financial support, and copied and distributed music.
The papal struggles continued through the 1430's: Eugene was deposed in 1439 and replaced by Duke Amédée of Savoy himself, as Pope (Antipope) Felix V.
With all this, Dufay returned to his homeland that year, arriving in Cambrai by December. In order to be a canon at Cambrai, he needed a law degree, which he obtained in 1437. He may have studied at Turin University in 1436. One of the first documents mentioning him in Cambrai is dated December 27, 1440, when he received a delivery of 36 lots of wine for the feast of St. John the Evangelist. A lot of wine, indeed.
Dufay remained in Cambrai through the 1440s, and served the Duke of Burgundy.
By this time he was writing in most of the common forms of the day, including masses, motets, magnificats, hymns, simple chant settings in fauxbourdon, and antiphons within the area of sacred music, and rondeaux, ballades, virelais (the latter three the formes fixes that dominated secular European music of the 1300 and 1400's) and a few other chanson types within the realm of secular music.
He also wrote a few Italian ballata, no doubt while he was in Italy; as with the motets, many secular pieces were written for specific occasions.
Most of his songs are for three voices, dominated by the highest, with the lower voices untexted, likely played by instruments. Occasionally Dufay used four voices, but sometimes the fourth was supplied by a later, usually anonymous, composer.
Typically he used the rondeau form when writing love songs. His later secular songs show influence from Busnois and Ockeghem, and the rhythmic and melodic differentiation between the voices is less.
Dufay wrote seven complete masses, 28 individual Mass movements, 15 settings of chants used in Mass Propers, three Magnificats, two Benidicamus Domino settings, 15 antiphon settings (6 Marian), 27 hymns, 22 motets (13 sorhythmic) and 87 chansons.
At the beginning of Dufay's career, the cyclic mass was in its infancy. By the end of his career, the cyclic mass had become the predominant and most substantial form of sacred music composition in Europe.
Dufay's first complete cyclic masses, the Missa sine nomine and the Missa S Jacobi, were written before 1440, and contain possibly the earliest use of fauxbourdon, featuring harmonizations in parallel fourths and sixths. Most early mass compositions used the "head motif" technique.
Many of Dufay's compositions were simple settings of chant, designed for liturgical use, likely substitutes for unadorned originals, again, often in fauxbourdon, as in the Marian antiphon Ave maris stella: The top and bottom lines are freely composed; the middle "fauxbourdon" line, parallels the top a perfect fourth below. The bottom part is often, but not always, a sixth below the uppermost voice, embellished and reaching cadences on the octave.
Dufay's mother died and was buried in the cathedral in 1444; and in 1445 Dufay moved into the house of the previous canon, which was to remain his primary residence for the rest of his life.
Two years later, Dufay re-used Nuper rosarum flores as part of the coda of his last isorhythmic motet, Fulgens iubar, in 1447.
After the abdication of the last antipope (Felix V, his own former employer Duke Amédée VIII of Savoy) in 1449, the struggle between different factions within the Church began to heal, and Dufay once again left Cambrai for points south.
He went to Turin in 1450, shortly before Amédée's defath, but returned to Cambrai later that year, returning to Savoy in 1452, absenting his homeland for six years.
By this decade, Dufay's masses were much influenced by "the English countenance" (i.e., the music of John Dunstaple); masses now mostly used cantus firmus technique, and isorhythm, as in his motets, in a more seamless contrapuntal technique with occasional imitation, a style which foreshadowed the work of Obrecht and Ockeghem.
Dufay attempted to find benefice or employment which would allow him to stay in Italy. Numerous compositions, including one of the four cantus-firmus Lamentationes (O tres piteulx/Omnes amici eius, the only surviving, c. 1454-1457) that he composed on the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and his famous mass based on Se la face ay pale. A letter to Lorenzo de'Medici also survives from this period.
However, unable to find a satisfactory position for his retirement, he returned north in 1458.
Upon his return in his final years, he was appointed canon of the cathedral, by now the most renowned composer in Europe. Once again he established close ties to the court of Burgundy, receiving many visitors, including Busnois, Ockeghem, Tinctoris, and Loyset Compère.
Missa "Ave regina", based on his Marian antiphon of 1463, uses all of the mass techniques Dufay used during his career, and may have been written as a deliberate summation. Indeed, all Dufay's late masses are tenor masses, with the cantus firmus is in the aforesaid part, a connected with the Endland of Leonel Power and Dunstable, but reaching back to Machaut.
Another Marian antiphon, Alma Redemptoris Mater begins as a simple rising pseudo-C-Major scale (from the chant's original suspicious F major), and unfolds in the three-voiced texture described above.
Another disarming piece is his Fanfare "Ad Modum Tubae", as performed on David Munrow's Instruments of the Medieval and Renaissance on two Buisines (Wooden Trumpets).
In this period Dufay probably wrote his Missa "L'homme armé," (although it has been dated as early as 1453), as well as a chanson on the same song.
The former features a delayed tenor cantus firmus in the opening Kyrie, as well as a wild Agnus Dei III, with the cryptic notation the "crab proceeds full and returns half." As a crab canon proceeds in retrograde, so the motive unfolds initally in reverse, speeding up to return (i.e. in forward motion) at double speed.
The latter chanson on L'homme armé, may have been inspired by Philip the Good's call for a new crusade against the Turks, who had recently captured Constantinople. Dufay also wrote a Requiem mass c. 1460, now lost.
The composer died on November 27, 1474, after an illness of several weeks. He had requested that his motet Ave regina celorum be sung for him as he died, with pleas for mercy interpolated between verses of the antiphon, but time was insufficient.
Dufay was buried in the chapel of St. Etienne in the cathedral of Cambrai; his portrait was carved onto his tombstone. After the destruction of the cathedral, the tombstone disappeared, but resurfaced in 1859, after being used to cover a well, and is now in a museum in Lille.
The Dutch towns of Amsterdam and Eindhoven, and the small Scottish town of Linlithgow all have streets named after Dufay, who is also memorialized by the early music ensemble Dufay Collective.
Franco-Flemish composer Gilles Binchois (Gilles de Binche, Gilles de Bins, c. 1400, c. Mons, Burgundy (now Belgium) - September 20, 1460), the son of Jean and Johanna de Binche (a nearby town), was one of the earliest members of the
[Territory of the Duchy of Burgundy (Bourgogne) in 1477 marked in yellow]
Burgundian School, and among the three most famous composers of the early 1400's.
While often ranked behind friend Guillaume Dufay and Englishman John Dunstable, his influence was arguably greater, as his compositions were cited, borrowed and used as source material (particularly for masses) more often than those by others of his time. He was considered the finest melodist of the century, with carefully shaped lines, easy to sing and utterly memorable.
Binchois became organist at the church of Ste. Waudru in Mons in 1419, and went to live in
Lille, Burgundy (now France, near the border with Belgium), four years later, perhaps becoming a soldier to the Burgundians, or to the English Earl of Suffolk, as indicated by a line in the memorial motet written on his death by Ockeghem.
In the 1420's he joined the court chapel of Burgundy, and by the time of his motet Nove cantum melodie (1431) he was probably a singer there, since the text of the motet itself lists all 19 singers. Despite the church associations, he evidently never produced a complete mass, let alone a L'Homme Arme one.
Most of his secular songs are rondeaux, which became the most common song form during the century. Binchois, however, rarely wrote in strophic form, but instead shaped his melody independently of the verse's rhyme scheme.
Among his stimulating works is Files a Marier (Don't Marry) (1450), a cleverly contrapuntal and irreverent chanson (French art song), complete with call-and-response nagging -- two upper voices in free imitative canon at the octave against two lower dissimilar counterpoints.
Giles Binchois - Files a Marier (Don't Marry)
(Music from the Court of Burgundy)
(Recording keyed to Historical Anthology of Music)
[The Sonian Forest (Dutch: Zoniënwoud, French: Forêt de Soignes) is a 4,421-hectare (10,920-acre) forest in the southeast of Brussels, Belgium]
Binchois retired to Soignes, with a large pension for long years of superlative service.
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The Forest of Soignies lay behind the Anglo-allied Army of the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo. From the time of the Romans it had generally been seen as a tactical blunder to position troops for battle in front of woodland because it hampers their ability to retreat. Some have argued that there was no bottom to the forest and in would not have hampered a disengagement and extraction. Others have suggested that Wellington if pressed intended to retreat eastwards towards Blucher's Prussian army so the interior of the wood was of little military significance.
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Mons (Dutch: Bergen, Picard: Mont) is a Walloon city and municipality located in the Belgian province of Hainaut, of which it is the capital. The Mons municipality includes the old communes of Cuesmes, Flénu, Ghlin, Hyon, Nimy, Obourg, Baudour (partly), Jemappes (partly), Ciply, Harmignies, Harveng, Havré, Maisières, Mesvin, Nouvelles, Saint-Denis, Saint-Symphorien, Spiennes, Villers-Saint-Ghislain, Casteau (partly), Masnuy-Saint-Jean (partly), and Ville-sur-Haine (partly).
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Burgundy (French: Bourgogne; German: Burgund) is a region historically situated in modern-day Belgium, France, and Switzerland, originally inhabited in turn by Celts (Gauls), Romans (Gallo-Romans), and in the 4th century assigned by Romans to the Germanic people of the Burgundians, who settled there in their own kingdom. This Burgundian kingdom was conquered in the 6th century by Franks who continued this kingdom under their own rule.
Later in time, the region was divided between the Duchy of Burgundy (west of Burgundy) and the County of Burgundy (east of Burgundy). The Duchy of Burgundy is the more famous of the two, and the one which reached historical fame. Later, the Duchy of Burgundy became the French province of Burgundy, while the County of Burgundy became the French province of Franche-Comté, literally meaning free county.
The modern-day administrative région of Bourgogne comprises most of the former Duchy of Burgundy.
The Burgundians were one of the Germanic peoples who filled the power vacuum left by the collapse of the western half of the Roman Empire. In 411, they crossed the Rhine and established a kingdom at Worms. Amidst repeated clashes between the Romans and Huns, the Burgundian kingdom eventually occupied what is today the borderlands between Switzerland, France, and Italy. In 534, the Franks defeated Godomar, the last Burgundian king, and absorbed the territory into their growing empire.
Burgundy's modern existence is rooted in the dissolution of the Frankish Empire. When the dynastic succession was settled in the 880s, there were four Burgundies:
the Kingdom of Upper (Transjurane) Burgundy around Lake Geneva, the Kingdom of Lower Burgundy in Provence, and the Duchy of Burgundy west of the Saône the County of Burgundy east of the Saône
The two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Burgundy were reunited in 937 and absorbed into the Holy Roman Empire under Conrad II in 1032, as the Kingdom of Arles. The Duchy of Burgundy was annexed by the French throne in 1477. The County of Burgundy remained loosely associated with the Holy Roman Empire (intermittently independent, whence the name "Franche-Comté"), and finally incorporated into France in 1678, with the Treaties of Nijmegen.
During the Middle Ages, Burgundy was the seat of some of the most important Western churches and monasteries, among them Cluny, Citeaux, and Vézelay.
During the Hundred Years' War, King John II of France gave the duchy to his younger son, rather than leaving it to his successor on the throne. The duchy soon became a major rival to the French throne, because the Dukes of Burgundy succeeded in assembling an empire stretching from Switzerland to the North Sea, mostly by marriage. The Burgundian Empire consisted of a number of fiefdoms on both sides of the (then largely symbolic) border between the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire. Its economic heartland was in the Low Countries, particularly Flanders and Brabant. The court in Dijon outshone the French court by far, both economically and culturally. In Belgium and in the south of the Netherlands, a "Burgundian lifestyle" still means "enjoyment of life, good food, and extravagant spectacle."
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Philip the Good (French: Philippe le Bon), also Philip III, Duke of Burgundy (July 31, 1396 – June 15, 1467) was Duke of Burgundy from 1419 until his death. He was a member of a cadet line of the Valois dynasty (the then Royal family of France). During his reign Burgundy reached the height of its prosperity and prestige and became a leading center of the arts. Philip is known in history for his administrative reforms, patronage of Flemish artists such as Jan van Eyck, and the capture of Joan of Arc. During his reign he alternated between English and French alliances in an attempt to improve his dynasty's position.
Born in Dijon, he was the son of John the Fearless and Margaret of Bavaria-Straubing. On the January 28, 1405, he was named Count of Charolais in appanage of his father and probably on the same day he was engaged to Michele of Valois (1395–1422), daughter of Charles VI of France and Isabeau of Bavaria. They were married in June of 1409.
Philip subsequently married Bonne of Artois (1393–1425), daughter of Philip of Artois, Count of Eu, and also the widow of his uncle, Philip II, Count of Nevers, in Moulins-les-Engelbert on November 30, 1424. The latter is sometimes confused with Philip's biological aunt, also named Bonne (sister of John the Fearless, lived 1379 - 1399), in part due to the Papal Dispensation required for the marriage which made no distinction between a marital aunt and a biological aunt.
His third marriage, in Bruges on January 7, 1430 with Isabella of Portugal (1397 - December 17, 1471), daughter of John I of Portugal and Philippa of Lancaster, produced three sons:
Antoine (September 30, 1430, Brussels – February 5, 1432, Brussels), Count of Charolais Joseph (April 24, 1432 – aft. May 6, 1432), Count of Charolais Charles (1433–1477), Count of Charolais and Philip's successor as Duke, called "Charles the Bold" or "Charles the Rash"
Philip also had some eighteen illegitimate children, including Antoine, bastard of Burgundy, by 24 documented mistresses. Another, Philip of Burgundy (1464-1524), bishop of Utrecht, was a fine amateur artist, and the subject of a biography in 1529.
Philip became Duke of Burgundy, Count of Flanders, Artois, and Franche Comté when his father was assassinated in 1419. Philip accused Charles, the Dauphin of France and Philip's brother-in-law of planning the murder of his father which had taken place during a meeting between the two at Montereau, and so he continued to prosecute the civil war between the Burgundians and Armagnacs. In 1420 Philip allied himself with Henry V of England under the Treaty of Troyes. In 1423 the alliance was strengthened by the marriage of his sister Anne to John, Duke of Bedford, regent for Henry VI of England.
In 1430 Philip's troops captured Joan of Arc at Compiègne and later handed her over to the English who orchestrated a heresy trial against her, conducted by pro-Burgundian clerics.
Despite this action against Joan of Arc, Philip's alliance with England was broken in 1435 when Philip signed the Treaty of Arras (which completely revoked the Treaty of Troyes) and thus recognised Charles VII as king of France. Philip signed for a variety of reasons, one of which may have been a desire to be recognised as the Premier Duke in France. Philip then attacked Calais, but this alliance with Charles was broken in 1439, with Philip supporting the revolt of the French nobles the following year (an event known as the Praguerie) and sheltering the Dauphin Louis.
Philip generally was preoccupied with matters in his own territories and seldom was directly involved in the Hundred Years' War, although he did play a role during a number of periods such as the campaign against Compiegne during which his troops captured Joan of Arc. He incorporated Namur into Burgundian territory in 1429 (March 1, by purchase from John III, Marquis of Namur), Hainault and Holland, Frisia and Zealand in 1432 (with the defeat of Countess Jacqueline in the last episode of the Hook and Cod wars); inherited the duchy of Brabant and Limburg and the margrave of Antwerp in 1430 (on the death of his cousin Philip of Saint-Pol); and purchased Luxembourg in 1443 from Elisabeth of Bohemia, Duchess of Luxembourg. Philip also managed to ensure his illegitimate son, David, was elected Bishop of Utrecht in 1456. It is not surprising that in 1435, Philip began to style himself "Grand Duke of the West". In 1463 Philip returned some of his territory to Louis XI. That year he also created an Estates-General based on the French model. The first meeting of the Estates-General was to obtain a loan for a war against France and to ensure support for the succession of his son, Charles I, to his dominions. Philip died in Bruges in 1467.
Philip's court can only be described as extravagant. Despite the flourishing bourgeois culture of Burgundy, which the court kept in close touch with, he and the aristocrats who formed most of his inner circle retained a world-view dominated by knightly chivalry. He declined membership in the English Order of the Garter in 1422, which could have been considered an act of treason against the King of France, his feudal overlord. Instead in 1430 he created his own Order of the Golden Fleece, based on the Knights of the Round Table. He had no fixed capital and moved the court between various palaces, the main urban ones being Brussels, Bruges, or Lille. He held grand feasts and other festivities, and the knights of his Order frequently travelled throughout his territory participating in tournaments. In 1454 Philip planned a crusade against the Ottoman Empire, launching it at the Feast of the Pheasant, but this plan never materialized. In a period from 1444-6 he is estimated to have spent a sum equivalent to 2% of Burgundy's main tax income over the period, the recette génerale, with a single Italian supplier of silk and cloth of gold, Giovanni di Arrigo Arnolfini.
His court was regarded as the most splendid in Europe, and became the accepted leader of taste and fashion, which probably helped the Burgundian economy considerably, as Burgundian (usually Netherlandish) luxury products became sought by the elites of other parts of Europe. During his reign, for example, the richest English commissioners of illuminated manuscripts moved away from English and Parisian products to those of the Netherlands, as did other foreign buyers. Philip himself is estimated to have added six hundred manuscripts to the ducal collection, making him by a considerable margin the most important patron of the period.
Philip was also a considerable patron of other arts, commissioning many tapestries (which he tended to prefer over paintings), pieces from goldsmiths, jewellery, and other works of art. It was during his reign that the Burgundian chapel became the musical center of Europe, with the activity of the Burgundian School of composers and singers. Gilles Binchois, Robert Morton, and later Guillaume Dufay, the most famous composer of the 15th century, were all part of Philip's court chapel.
[Roger van der Weyden - Isabella of Portugal]
In 1428 Jan van Eyck traveled to Portugal to paint King John I's daughter Infanta Isabel for Philip in advance of their marriage. With help from more experienced Portuguese shipbuilders Philip established a shipyard in Bruges. Roger van der Weyden painted his portrait twice on panel, of which only copies survive, wearing the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece. The only original van der Weyden of Philip to survive is a superb miniature from a manuscript.
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Jan van Eyck or Johannes de Eyck ( c. 1385 – before July 9, 1441) was an Early Netherlandish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century.
There is a common misconception, which dates back to the sixteenth-century Vite of the Tuscan artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari, that Jan van Eyck invented oil painting. It is however true that he achieved, or perfected, new and remarkable effects using this technique.
[Jan van Eyck - The Arnolfini Portrait (1434)]
Jan van Eyck has often been linked as brother to painter and peer Hubert van Eyck, because both have been thought to originate from the same town, Maaseik in Limburg (Belgium). Another brother, Lambert van Eyck is mentioned in Burgundian court documents, and there is a conjecture that he too was a painter, and that he may have overseen the closing of Jan van Eyck's Bruges workshop.
Another significant, and rather younger, painter who worked in Southern France, Barthélemy van Eyck, is presumed to be a relation.
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The Kingdom of Belgium is a country in northwest Europe. Belgium covers an area of 30,528 square kilometers (11,787 square miles) and has a population of about 10.5 million.
Straddling the cultural boundary between Germanic and Latin Europe, Belgium's two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north, with 58% of the population, and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia, inhabited by 32%. The Brussels-Capital Region, although officially bilingual, is a mostly French-speaking enclave within the Flemish Region and near the Walloon Region, and has 10% of the population
A small German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia.
Belgium's linguistic diversity and related political and cultural conflicts are reflected in the political history and a complex system of government.
The name 'Belgium' is derived from Gallia Belgica, a Roman province in the northernmost part of Gaul that was inhabited by the Belgae, a mix of Celtic and Germanic peoples.
Historically, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were known as the Low Countries, which used to cover a somewhat larger area than the current Benelux group of states. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 17th century, it was a prosperous centre of commerce and culture. From the 16th century until the Belgian revolution in 1830, many battles between European powers were fought in the area of Belgium, causing it to be dubbed "the battlefield of Europe" and "the cockpit of Europe" -- a reputation strengthened by both World Wars.
The area of present-day Belgium has seen significant demographic, political and cultural upheavals over the course of two millennia. In the first century, the Romans, after defeating the local tribes, created the province of Gallia Belgica. A gradual immigration by Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century, brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kingdom. A gradual shift of power during the 8th century evolved into the Carolingian Empire and culminated with the coronation of Charlemagne as ruler of The Holy Roman Empire.
During the Middle Ages small feudal states emerged, many of which rejoined as the Burgundian Netherlands in the 14th and 15th centuries.
