Du modèle à la mode Science et expérience dans le Champion des Dames de Martin Le Franc

In the Champion des Dames, Martin Le Franc gives an original opinion on the music of his time : rejecting the traditional laudatio temporis acti, he declares that the world may well be going to the bad, but it is nonetheless producing music that is creative, fresh and astonishing. The musicians of the age of John the Fearless were out of fashion under Philip the Good, when Dufay and Binchois were in the ascendant. Music is an artform that never stands still ; models are no sooner built than they have to be left behind. The popular blind minstrels at Philip the ­Good’s court suggest the fragility of these transient authorities. The only thing that matters is the effect produced on the audience, whose experience of a true performance is more important than any authority that a model may have. This promotion of the idea of novelty was itself part of a changing ­conception of history, one that was in part already humanist in inspiration, or at least moving away from medieval ideas.