Dufay was born around 1400 and died Cambrai 27 November 1474. He is the most acclaimed musician of the 15th century. Almost 200 of his works survive, including 84 songs, eight complete masses, 13 isorhythmic motets, and numerous hymn settings, single mass movements, and works in honour of the Virgin Mary and various saints and liturgical feasts. He is often described as a Burgundian composer, but in spite of well-attested contacts with Burgundian composers (e.g. Binchois) and the fact that his home town of Cambrai was under Burgundian control, he was never a resident member of that court.
Life
Life
Dufay is first heard of as a choirboy at Cambrai Cathedral in 1409, and there he was perhaps instructed by the composers Grenon, Lebertoul, and Loqueville. In his early 20s he apparently moved to Italy,
since two motets (Vasilissa ergo and Apostolo glorioso), a chanson (Resvelliés vous), and possibly his Missa sine nomine commemorate events connected with the Pesaro branch of the Malatesta family. He then seems to have returned to France for a time, as in 1426 he was writing the song Adieu ces bons vins, which bids farewell to the people and wines of the north. He is next found in Bologna in 1427. The ten years between 1428 and 1438 must have been unsettled times for Dufay. Bologna was under the control of the Pope, held for him by the Malatesta, but in 1428 it revolted and Dufay, together with his patron Cardinal Aleman, had to flee to Rome. The Missa Sancti Jacobi may have been written during his time in Bologna. Dufay stayed in Rome until 1433, and sang in the papal chapel. In 1431 Pope Martin V died and was succeeded by Eugenius IV. Several of Dufay's works commemorate this Pope and his deeds, including the motets Balsamus et munda cera, Supremum est mortalibus bonum, and the famous Nuper rosarum flores, written for the dedication of Florence Cathedral by Eugenius in 1436.
Throughout the 1430s Dufay seems to have been torn between two patrons, Eugenius IV (whom he served 1431–3 and 1436–7) and Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy (where he worked 1433–5 and 1438–9). It was at the wedding of Amadeus's son Louis in 1434 that Dufay's first recorded meeting with the Burgundian court and Binchois, described by the Savoy poet Martin le Franc in Le Champion des dames (c.1440), seems to have taken place. In 1438 a church council deposed Eugenius and elected Felix V—alias Duke Amadeus of Savoy—in his place. The election was strongly opposed by Philip the Good of Burgundy, and had Dufay remained in Savoy he would have been barred from visiting Cambrai and from collecting his benefices in Burgundian territory. Thus in 1439 Dufay returned to the north.
His temporary separation from the Savoy court and his final departure from Italy seem gradually to have turned his attention away from secular song and the ceremonial motet. Instead, he expanded his technique to include the more Gothic northern form of the cyclic mass based on a tenor cantus firmus. The masses on Se la face ay pale, L'Homme armé, Ecce ancilla Domini, and Ave regina coelorum are of this type; the Missa ‘Caput’ sometimes attributed to Dufay is now thought instead to be by an English composer.
For the next 11 years Dufay was back in Cambrai. It seems that one of the buildings belonging to the cathedral was called the Maison L'Homme Armé. The coincidence of this name with the title of a famous melody is intriguing, as the L'Homme armé tune formed the basis of masses by many composers with Cambrai connections, including Dufay, Busnois, Ockeghem, Tinctoris, and Regis. Dufay visited the Burgundian court a couple of times during these years, but his connection with the famous Burgundian Feast of the Pheasant, held in 1454 as part of a rescue campaign for Constantinople, now seems doubtful. His Lamentation on the Fall of Constantinople was written too late for the feast, and the song Je ne vis oncques sung there is probably by Binchois rather than Dufay.
The last major upheaval for Dufay came in 1450, when Felix V stepped down and Philip of Burgundy reopened contacts with the Savoy court. Immediately Dufay is found in Savoy territory, and in 1452–8 he went for a long stay at the court itself.
The music
Dufay was one of the last continental composers in the medieval churchly tradition. In spite of this, some of his works (particularly the chansons and mass movements from his middle years) display the warm harmonies, symmetrical phrasing, and directly expressive melodies characteristic of the early Renaissance. Moreover, Dufay provides us with the earliest example of close harmonies derived from fauxbourdon technique (in the Missa Sancti Jacobi), some of the earliest completely integrated four-voice textures (in the Missa ‘Ave regina coelorum’), and a movement towards richer sonorities based on the intervals of the 3rd, 6th, and 10th. His preferred forms were conservative in outline rather than in detail; for example, his masses were perhaps the first to employ secular tunes as cantus firmi. Some of his stylistic features, such as his melodic clarity, can be linked with his experience of Italian music, while his harmonic sonority may have been derived from developments in English music.
In spite of his secular output, Dufay was a cosmopolitan rather than a worldly composer. In the course of a long illness he requested that his motet Ave regina coelorum, with its mention of his name in a personal supplication, should be sung at his deathbed. This was not possible, but the motet and his Requiem Mass (the earliest of its kind, unfortunately now lost) were sung at his funeral.
Anthony Pryer/David Fallows
