Dufay

Career Summary

• formed central musical language of Renaissance
• led way in by basing sonority on full triads, harmonic direction, control of dissonance;  new kind of melody composed in free flowing rhythms and gently curving arches;  homogeneous texture;  new methods for formal structure
• extremely influential 15th C Burgundian composer
• requent trips to Italy exposed him to most advanced musical thinking of his time; educated in Cambrai, where he eventually settled
• choirboy in Cambrai; member of chapel at court of Malatesta in Pesar and Rimini
• Malatestas' commissioned him to compose works commemorating important events in the family:
• Vasilissa  ergo gaude  (isorhythmic motet); Resvellies vous  (chanson): celebrate marriages
• Apostolo glorioso  (isorhythmic motet):  dedicate Church of St.  Andrew in Greece (1426)
• returned to Cambrai around 1426, became familiar with English music
• chanson Adieu ces bons vins de Lannoy (1426); Missa Sancti Jacobi
• singer in Papal chapel in Italy 1428-1437; several contemporary composers were there at same time
• works written at this time commemorate contemporary events:
• isorhythmic motet Nuper rosarum flores  celebrates Brunelleschi's dome of  the cathedral of Florence (1436)
• many single Mass movements, hymn settings
• worked in Cambrai in later years as canon of the cathedral; composed his finest music

Chansons

• over 70 chansons; also a few songs on Italian texts;  lyrical, refined and delicate
• most celebrate frustrated type of chivalric love; poems written in artificial language of the courtly rhetoriqueurs  of 15th C
• Dufay continued late medieval traditions, preferring rondeaux (over 60)
• poems consist of a refrain, part of which alternates with a stanza
• ABaAabAB; variants:  ABCDabABabcdABCD (quatrains); ABCDEabcABCabcdeABCDE (cinquains), 1 or 2 sixains
• ballades:  longest and most serious poems;  strophic poems in which first two couplets of each strophe were both set to same music (abandoned ca. 1440)
• 10 ballades; two exceptions:
• Se la face ay pale  (through composed)
• La belle se siet  (appears to be based on a popular tune)
• virelais:  less serious A bba A bba A
• bergerette:  virelais of one stanza AbbaA
• 1 virelai, 3 bergerette

Style

• 3 voices (some with 4)
• elaborate top voice carefully planned; arch melodies
• tenor simpler but finely constructed
• contratenor fills in, sometimes determines harmonies, keeps motion going forward at cadences
• later revised, refined style to make melodic rhythm flow more smoothly, bring strands of texture closer together
• concept of song as accompanied melody
• performance:  various combinations of voice and instrumental accompaniment;  introductory, intermediate and closing phrases suggest that instruments played top line as well
• early chansons:  melody metrically simpler than predecessors or his own later works:  transcribed in editions as 3/4 or 6/8 with few syncopations over barlines
• architectonic melodies:  range from D to A; then descends 8va
• tenor and contratenor share same range; contratenor often functional, emphasizing tonic and dominant
• hemiola in early chansons
• later on, broke away from regular metrical stress, conceiving melodies as irregular groupings of 2-3 beats:  floating quality
• rhythmic freedom adopted rather late; influenced later composers
• abandoned ballade after 1440
• refined control of dissonance, tonality, integrating and homogenizing texture (tenor often imitates superius)
• in late works, techniques are completely mastered; duple meter is as common as triple
• tonality established by alternation of tonic/dominant in first phrase
• connected phrase to structure by controlling scale degrees upon which cadences occur:  tonal planning
• Landini cadence, "under-third cadence";  V-I cadence in later works, disguised as "octave-leap" cadence (avoids parallel motion)
• also wrote several contrafacta Italian songs in rondeau form, some Italian ballatas, a setting of Petrarch's canzone to the Virgin, and a few short secular pieces in French or Latin

Motets

1.  harmonizations of plainchant accompanying liturgical service

• shorter, simpler; antiphons, sequences and hymns
• chant paraphrased by ornamentation in top voice
• cycle of hymns for liturgical year:  simple harmonizations of undecorated     chant; performed in alternatim  :  even-numbered strophes of hymn sung to     polyphonic setting, while odd-numbered strophes performed in plainchant
• fauxbourdon

2.  "song motets"

• more elaborate motets based on cantus firmi or paraphrasing chant  in top voice; dedicated to Virgin; resemble chansons
• CF technique sometimes abandoned
• homogeneous texture
• rhythmically free (later)
  

3.  Isorhythmic motets

• most impressive and complex;  mostly written for particular historic occasions-appropriate for official events
• flourished for last time
• 4 voices dominate; though 2 have 3 and 2 have 5 voices
• in 2, motets arranged so they can be performed with either 4 or 5 parts, or with two top parts accompanied by solus tenor
• all combine slow-moving tenor (plainchant CF) with faster upper voices singing one or more simultaneously texts
• in some only tenor is isorhythmic, with 40-bar pattern, repeated sometimes in diminution or augmentation
• in others all voices isorhythmic
• second isorhythmic tenor based on chant sometimes added
• in some talea and color are both present
• some have introits, interludes, and postludes independent of  isorhythm
• early motets:  upper voices frequently imitative, with longer directional melodies
• Supremum est mortalibus : first datable composition in  which fauxbourdon is used

Mass

• realized possibilities for convention of basing cycle on a single CF, bringing it into mainstream of Franco-Flemish polyphony
• apparently first composer to use secular melody as structural element in Mass first to regularly write Counter-tenor beneath borrowed tenor to furnish strong bass, free himself from harmonic restrictions from a given melody in the lowest voice
• isorhythmic motet concept continued in Mass, but with a twist
• some presented in a new rhythmic guise with each appearance
• some retain rhythmic identity
• CF Mass became vehicle for large-scale musical thought
• Dufay's CF Masses written after he came into contact with English music in late 1420's
• first efforts resulted in single & paired movements; two short masses of 3 mvts each (Kyrie-Gloria-Credo), (Kyrie-Sanctus-Agnus)

Three early cycles without a unifying CF:

• Missa sine nomine
• Missa Sancti Antonii
• Missa Sancti Jacobi  (includes Proper Mvts.  as well)

early single-mvt characteristics

• 3 voices in treble dominated style
• with or without chant, with some chant paraphrasing in top v
• fauxbourdon in Missa Sancti Jacobi
• alternatim performance
• some tropes (one 4-part motet incorporates secular melodies)

pairs, 3mvt. Masses and Mass cycles

• "motto opening": same phrase in one or more voices
• distinctive final cadences ends each mvt. of one of the short Masses
• same sequence of time signatures
• some multi-mvt works unified simply because scribes associated them together
• early experimentation with various devices to unify
• no real liturgical need for unification

4 late masses firmly attributed to Dufay:

• Se la face ay pale, L'homme arme  (secular CF)
• Ecce ancilla Domini, Ave regina caelorum  (plainchant)

secular CF: (Se la face ay pale )

• from own works
• motto openings
• tenor creates form of Mass; repetitions impose order
• rhythmic diminution creates sense of climax
• CF not always present
• within movements, texture reduced to duets
• each movement opens with extended duet, preceding CF
• duet-tutti alternations
• structure determined by phrases lengths, cadence placement
• structure doesn't always coincide with rhetoric of text:
• Dufay valued musical design over text expression; words play subservient role to music
• individual syllables???  scribes didn't indicate:  performer freedom?
• no two bars display same rhythms
• tension between musical and textual rhythms relieved at cadence points, with dissonances taking into account strong and weak beats
• 4 voice texture, with variation of texture
  
• contratenor kept below tenor:  functional
  
• triadic intervals
  
• harmonic style determined by control of dissonance:  consonant on strong beats, except for suspensions;  dissonances occur on weak beats & subdivisions, but keeps motion forward-moving
• in other masses Dufay used borrowed material with more rhythmic freedom, elaborating tenor on each reoccurrance
  

Missa Ave Regina caelorum

•  mature work
• imitation between all 4 voices
• top voice not as dominant
• 4 voices all quite melodically oriented
• homogeneous texture
• formal clarity