Guillaume Dufay (1397 - 1474)

Guillaume Dufay (Du Fay, Du Fayt) (August 5, 1397?[1] ? November 27, 1474) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. As the central figure in the Burgundian School, he was the most famous and influential composer in Europe in the mid-15th century.

Music and influence

Dufay was among the most influential composers of the 15th century, and his music was copied, distributed and sung everywhere that polyphony had taken root. Almost all composers of the succeeding generations absorbed some elements of his style. The wide distribution of his music is all the more impressive considering that he died several decades before the availability of music printing.

Dufay wrote 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 and a few other chanson types within the realm of secular music. None of his surviving music is specifically instrumental, although instruments were certainly used for some of his secular music, especially for the lower parts; all of his sacred music is vocal. Instruments may have been used to reinforce the voices in actual performance for almost any portion of his output. In his lifetime, Dufay wrote seven complete masses, 28 individual Mass movements, 15 settings of chant used in Mass Propers, three Magnificats, two Benedicamus Domino settings, 15 antiphon settings (6 are Marian antiphons), 27 hymns, 22 motets (13 are isorhythmic) and 87 chansons. Assigning works to Dufay based on alleged stylistic similarities has been a favorite pastime of musicologists for at least a hundred years, judging from the copious literature on the subject.

Secular music

Most of Dufay's secular songs follow the formes fixes (rondeau, ballade, and virelai), which dominated secular European music of the 14th and 15th centuries. He also wrote a handful of Italian ballate, almost certainly while he was in Italy. As is the case with his motets, many of the songs were written for specific occasions, and many are datable, thus supplying useful biographical information.

Most of his songs are for three voices, using a texture dominated by the highest voice; the other two voices, unsupplied with text, were likely played by instruments. Occasionally Dufay used four voices, but in a number of these songs the fourth voice was supplied by a later, usually anonymous, composer. Typically he used the rondeau form when writing love songs. His latest secular songs show influence from Busnois and Ockeghem, and the rhythmic and melodic differentiation between the voices is less; as in the work of other composers of the mid-15th century, he was beginning to tend towards the smooth polyphony which was to become the predominant style fifty years later.

A typical ballade is Resvellies vous et faites chiere lye, which was written in 1423 for the marriage of Carlo Malatesta and Vittoria di Lorenzo Colonna[5] (Carlo was a son of Malatesta dei Sonetti, Lord of Pesaro. Vittoria was the niece of Pope Martin V).[6] The musical form is aabC for each stanza, with C being the refrain. The musical setting emphasizes passages in the text which specifically refer to the couple being married.
[edit] Writings on music theory

Two written works by Dufay have been documented, but neither has survived. A note in the margin in a manuscript held in the Biblioteca Nazionale Palatina in Parma refers to a Musica which he wrote; no copy of the work itself has been found. Nineteenth-century musicologist François-Joseph Fétis claimed to have seen a sixteenth-century copy of a Tractatus de musica mensurata et de proportionibus by Dufay, last seen in a bookshop in London in 1824. The contents of neither work are known.[7]
[edit] Influence

Dufay was one of the last composers to make use of medieval techniques such as isorhythm,[8] but one of the first to use the harmonies, phrasing and expressive melodies characteristic of the early Renaissance.[9] His compositions within the larger genres (masses, motets and chansons) are mostly similar to each other; his renown is largely due to what was perceived as his perfect control of the forms in which he worked, as well as his gift for memorable and singable melody. During the 15th century he was universally regarded as the greatest composer of the time, and that belief has largely persisted to the present day.

The early music ensemble Dufay Collective is named for the composer. (Hide extended text) ... (Read all)
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