Busnoys and the Early Fifteenth Century: A Note on 'L'ardant Desir' and 'Faictes De Moy'

There are several references to ‘L'ardant desir’ from around the time of the Mass that Rob Wegman argues must be by Busnoys. It appears among the list of seventeen chansons in Nicole de la Chesnaye's Condamnacton de banquet: thirteen of these can be identified confidently with chansons circulating in the early 1470s. ¹ It is named as a basse danse, along with ‘Je languis’, in Martial d'Auvergne's Arrets d'amour, written in the early 1460s. ² And there are two related polyphonic elaborations headed ‘L'ardant desier’ in the Buxheim keyboard manuscript of the same date, ³ both with a Tenor line that is plainly a somewhat confused version of the line Wegman has deduced to be the tenor of the Mass.