Guillaume Du Fay
Guillaume Du Fay (/djuːˈfaɪ/ dyoo-FEYE, French: [dy fa(j)i]; also Dufay, Du Fayt; 5 August 1397(?)[2] – 27 November 1474) was a composer and music theorist of early Renaissance music, who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish. Considered the leading European composer of his time, his music was widely performed and reproduced.[3] Du Fay was well-associated with composers of the Burgundian School, particularly his colleague Gilles Binchois, but was never a regular member of the Burgundian chapel himself.[4][5]
"Dufay" and "Du Fay" redirect here. For other uses, see Dufay (disambiguation).
While he is among the best-documented composers of his time, Du Fay's birth and family is shrouded with uncertainty, though he was probably the illegitimate child of a priest. He was educated at Cambrai Cathedral, where his teachers included Nicolas Grenon and Richard Loqueville, among others. For the next decade, Du Fay worked throughout Europe: as a subdeacon in Cambrai, under Carlo I Malatesta in Rimini, for the House of Malatesta in Pesaro, and under Louis Aleman in Bologna, where he was ordained priest. As his fame began to spread, he settled in Rome in 1428 as musician of the prestigious papal choir, first under Pope Martin V and then Pope Eugene IV, where he wrote the motets Balsamus et munda cera, Ecclesie militantis and Supremum est mortalibus. Amid Rome's finical and political disorder in the 1430s, Du Fay took a leave of absence from the choir to serve Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy.
Du Fay returned to Italy in 1436, writing his most admired work, the complex motet Nuper Rosarum Flores, which celebrated the consecration of Filippo Brunelleschi's dome for the Florence Cathedral. He later joined the recently-moved papal court in Bologna, and was associated with the House of Este in Ferrara. For the next eleven years, Du Fay was in Cambrai serving Philip the Good, under whom he may have written now-lost works on music theory. After a brief return to both Savoy and Italy, Du Fay settled in Cambrai in 1458, where his focus shifted from song and motet, to composing English-inspired cyclic masses based on cantus firmus, such as the Missa Ave regina celorum, the Missa Ecce ancilla Domini, the Missa L'Homme armé and the Missa Se la face ay pale. During his final years in Cambrai, Du Fay wrote his now-lost requiem and both met and influenced the leading musicians of his time, including Antoine Busnois, Loyset Compère, Johannes Tinctoris and particularly, Johannes Ockeghem.
Du Fay has been described as leading the first generation of European musicians who were primarily considered 'composers' by occupation. His erratic career took him throughout Western Europe, forming a 'cosmopolitan style' and an extensive oeuvre which included representatives of virtually every polyphonic genre of his time.[3] Like Binchois, Du Fay was deeply influenced by the contenance angloise style of John Dunstaple, and synthesized it with a wide variety of other styles, including that of the famous Missa Caput, and the techniques of his younger contemporaries, Ockeghem and Busnois.[6]
Music theory writings[edit]
Two written works on music theory by Du Fay have been documented, but neither has survived.[28][29] The first of these is known from the theorist Gaffurius, who wrote in the margins of both his Ext, uetus parvus musicae and Tractatus brevis cantus plani references to a Musica by Du Fay.[29] The citations, however, are very brief and reveal nothing more than information which might be found in any music treatise of the period.[30] Given the supposed unimportance of the treatise, the biographer Francesco Rocco Rossi questions why Gaffurius would even include the citations, and suggests that perhaps he was relying on the elder composer's authority.[30] He concludes that "the chronological proximity between the two musicians leads us to consider this testimony faithful."[30] The second derives from the nineteenth-century musicologist François-Joseph Fétis, who claimed to have seen a sixteenth-century copy of a treatise ascribed to Du Fay, entitled Tractatus de musica mensurata et de proportionibus ('A Treatise on Measured Music and Proportions').[31] It was last documented as having been sold to a London book dealer in 1824.[31] The testimony from Fétis remains problematic, as nothing of it is known aside from its name, making it impossible reconstruct.[30]
If Du Fay did indeed write these works, he would be among a large tradition of 'composer-theorists', including Johannes Ciconia, Franchinus Gaffurius and Tinctoris, among others.[32] It is possible that these documents are the same treatise, and the references to Musica were shorthand for the work seen by Fétis.[31] Alternatively, Rossi notes that Fétis spoke specifically of a treatise influenced by Du Fay, which may not necessarily mean he was its author.[33] Rossi, however, contends that the works are the same, while Planchart and Laurenz Lütteken list them separately in their catalogues.[33]
Legacy[edit]
Before Du Fay's time, the concept of a 'composer'—that is, a musician whose primary occupation is composition—was largely unfamiliar in Europe. The emergence of musicians who focused on composition above other musical endeavors arose in the 15th century, and was exemplified by Du Fay.[40]
Due to their mutual importance, Du Fay and Binchois have been grouped together since their lifetimes.[41] The musicologist Reinhard Strohm considers this misleading, noting that that while Binchois "earned his enormous reputation in the one genre in which he excelled as a composer, performer and possibly even poet, Du Fay's creativity unfolded along many more musical lines".[41] He furthers that Du Fay's oeuvre is "more diversified than that of any composer since Machaut.[41]
Du Fay was one of the last composers to make use of late-medieval polyphonic structural techniques such as isorhythm, and one of the first to employ the more mellifluous harmonies, phrasing and melodies characteristic of the early Renaissance.[22] 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 his time, an opinion that has largely survived to the present day.
Du Fay is the namesake of the Dufay Collective, an early music ensemble of historically informed performances.[42]