Du Fay [Dufay; Du Fayt], Guillaume

(b Beersel, ?5 Aug 1397; d Cambrai, 27 Nov 1474 ). French composer and theorist. He was acknowledged by his

contemporaries as the leading composer of his day. He held positions in many of the musical centres of Europe

and his music was copied and performed virtually everywhere that polyphony was practised.

1. Life.

According to the executors of Du Fay’s will, his ‘homeland’ was the town of Bersele [Beersel] near Brussels. His

date of birth has been postulated by Planchart (EMH, 1988; 1995) as 5 August 1397; this date is based on the year

of his ordination (late 1427) and his years as a chorister at Cambrai Cathedral (1409–12), and events connected

with the establishment of his obit. His original patronymic was Du Fayt; he apparently altered the spelling to Du Fay

during his years in Italy. The family name (Du Fay as well as Du Fayt), universally spelt as two words in all 14th-

and 15th-century documents traceable directly to bearers of the name, was not common in Cambrai: the largest

concentration is found in documents from the area of Valenciennes. Du Fay was born the illegitimate son of a

single woman, Marie Du Fayt, and a priest whose name has not come down to us.

The earliest mention of the composer comes from the years 1409 to 1412, where he is listed as ‘Willemet’ and later

‘Willermus Du Fayt’. His teachers at Cambrai during those years included Rogier de Hesdin, who taught him for 11

weeks in the early summer of 1409, Nicolas Malin,magister puerorum at the cathedral from 1409 to 1412, and

perhaps Richard Loqueville, magister puerorum from 1413 until his death in 1418. Du Fay’s connection with

Cambrai is probably due to his mother’s decision to live with a relative, Jehan Hubert, who became a residentiary

canon of the cathedral in 1408 and whose first cousin, Jehanne Huberde, was in the care of Marie.

Du Fay apparently caught the attention of the cathedral authorities early on, for they made him an exceptional gift

of a copy of Alexandre de Villedieu’s Doctrinale in 1411. His instruction in music and in grammar followed the rigid

but practical curriculum common to most French cathedral schools in the late Middle Ages. By 24 June 1414 he

had received a small benefice as chaplain of the Salve in the parish church of St Géry outside the walls of

Cambrai, but by November of that year he was no longer at Cambrai. It is generally assumed that he went to the

Council of Konstanz (1414–18), either in the retinue of Jehan de Lens, Bishop of Cambrai, or that of Pierre d’Ailly,

who had been Bishop of Cambrai when Du Fay was a chorister. This assumption is supported by his later

connection with Carlo Malatesta, whom the composer could only have met at Konstanz, and also by the nature and

transmission of his earliest datable composition, a Sanctus related to a similar work by Loqueville, employing as a

cantus firmus a troped chant that was used at Cambrai as part of the recently compiled Mass to pray for the end of

the Schism.

By November 1418 Du Fay had returned to Cambrai and was already a subdeacon. He is mentioned as taking part

in the services at St Géry until Ash Wednesday 1420. In the summer of that year he entered the service of Carlo

Malatesta da Rimini. There is no direct documentary evidence of this, but a number of pieces were written for

celebrations at Rimini in honour of Carlo’s relatives from Pesaro: the motet Vasilissa ergo gaude was written in

honour of Cleofe Malatesta, bride of Theodore Palaiologos, before their wedding in 1421; the ballade Resvelliés

vous was for the wedding of Carlo Malatesta da Pesaro to Vittoria Colonna in Rimini on 18 July 1423; and the

rondeau Hé compaignons, which lists in its texts the names of no fewer than five of the musicians of Carlo

Malatesta da Rimini, including Hugo and Arnold de Lantins. A mass Ordinary setting using material closely related

to Resveillés vous must also date from these years.

Du Fay apparently returned north in 1424, most likely because Jehan Hubert, in whose house Marie Du Fayt was

still living, became seriously ill. Hubert died on 24 December 1425; he left a substantial bequest to Marie, but there

is no mention of Guillaume. No documentation concerning Du Fay’s whereabouts in 1424 and 1425 has come to

light, but on the basis of two songs, Ce jour le doibt and Adieu ces bons vins de Lannoys, it is assumed that he

was a petit vicaire at Laon Cathedral. This view is supported by the fact that his first two benefices after the one in

St Géry were a chaplaincy at the altar of St Fiacre in Laon (1429) and another at the altar of St John the Baptist in

the parish church of Nouvion-le-Vineux (1430). The collation of this last benefice belonged to the community of

chaplains in Laon. Early in 1426 Du Fay was recruited by Robert Auclou, secretary of Cardinal Louis Aleman, to

join the cardinal’s familia in Bologna, where Aleman was papal legate. If Du Fay travelled to Bologna with Auclou

he was in that city by late February 1426. Two litterae de fructibus from Aleman to St Géry, recorded in the chapter

acts, attest Du Fay’s presence in Bologna. He is mentioned in the first, dated 12 April 1427, as a deacon, and in

the second, dated 24 March 1428, as a priest.

Du Fay was in Bologna from February or March 1426 until August 1428, when the Canedoli faction in the city

revolted and expelled Aleman and his court. A number of works can be placed in the Bologna years, notably the

isorhythmic motets Rite maiorem Jacobum, written for Robert Auclou, and Apostolo glorioso, written for the

rededication of a church of St Andrew in Patras, the last Latin diocese of Greece, whose bishop was Pandolfo

Malatesta da Pesaro, as well as the song Mon chier amy, which, it has been suggested (in Fallows, 1982), was

written as a song of condolence to Carlo Malatesta da Rimini on the death of his brother Pandolfo (d 3 October

1427). The Missa S Jacobi, which includes Propers as well as the Ordinary, has been placed in that period since it

makes use of a rhymed alleluia, and there is evidence that the St James liturgy in the church of S Giacomo,

Bologna, used one of the very rare versified Offices for that saint.

After leaving Bologna Du Fay went to Rome. He is listed as a member of the papal chapel in a payment of 4

December 1428, but a littera de fructibus dated 14 April 1429 states that he had been a papal chaplain for about

six months, placing his arrival at the curia sometime in October 1428. He remained in the papal chapel until July

1433. During his years in Rome he, like other members of the chapel, sought to advance his clerical career by

petitioning the pope for a number of benefices. Although he still only held the locally collated benefices of St Géry

and Laon by 30 April 1430, by 18 September of that year he had obtained the parish church of St Pierre in Tournai.

Pope Martin V died on 20 February 1431 and Gabriele Condulmer was crowned Pope Eugenius IV on 11 March.

Traditionally a new pope, in the weeks after his coronation, granted two expectatives to virtually every member of

the curia as well as to thousands of petitioners in rolls submitted to him by the rulers and the universities. Very few

of the original rolls survive and even the registers where such petitions were copied were apparently destroyed at

the end of every papacy. Exceptionally, the roll containing the petitions of the chapel of Eugenius (I-Rvat C.S.703),

dated 24 March 1431, has been preserved, which gave rise to the idea that Eugenius had taken a special interest

in his singers. Du Fay’s two expectatives were to unnamed benefices; later documents identify them as

canonicates at Tournai and at St Donatian, Bruges, although it was a long time before he took up either position.

In August 1431 he received a canonicate at Lausanne with the proviso that he resign the benefice at St Pierre,

Tournai. On his resignation that post was requested by one Jacobus de Werp, whose letter is the sole source of

the information that Du Fay was the son of a priest and a single woman. In the end the benefice was awarded

instead to another papal singer, Gilles Laury. In 1433 Du Fay obtained for a short time the Benedictine priory of

Cossonay, near Lausanne, which he resigned in exchange for another (unnamed) benefice. That same year he

sought a renewal of his right to the two expectatives originally granted him by Eugenius IV in 1431.

Among the works written by Du Fay during his Roman years are the motets Ecclesie militantis,Balsamus et munda

cera and Supremum est mortalibus. The first of these has been thought to be for the coronation of Eugenius IV, but

neither text nor transmission support that assumption; the second was intended for the distribution of the wax

Agnus Dei on 7 April 1431; and the third for the meeting of King Sigismund and the pope on 31 May 1433. The

song Quel fronte signorille carries in its only source the annotation that it was written in Rome. Planchart (1998)

indicated that the Kyrie settings and the earliest hymns belong to the Roman years as well.

The pope’s finances were severely depleted as a result of the Council of Basle, which had opened during the year

of Eugenius’s election, and it is clear that by 1433 the papal chapel was in crisis. Furthermore, Du Fay’s own

ecclesiastical career seemed also to be stalled. Thus, when Duke Amédée VIII of Savoy sought to recruit him, the

composer obtained a leave of absence from the pope. By August 1433 he had left Rome and on 1 February 1434

he is mentioned as maistre de chapelle in Savoy.

He probably arrived at the court sometime before that date, since a week after his arrival the festivities celebrating

the wedding of the duke’s son, Louis, to Anne de Lusignan, princess of Cyprus, took place. Among the guests

were the Duke of Burgundy with his entire retinue, including the Burgundian chapel, and it is likely that the Duke of

Savoy had sought Du Fay in order to have in his own chapel a musician of the same calibre as those of the Duke

of Burgundy. These festivities are the only documented time that Du Fay, Binchois, Martin le Franc and the blind

vielle players of the Duchess of Burgundy were together (Wright, 1975), and therefore the famous reference to

their meeting in Martin le Franc’s celebrated poem Le champion des dames can be traced to this occasion. By July

1435 Du Fay had returned to the papal chapel, which was then in Florence.

Du Fay developed close ties to the Savoy family. Their musical establishment was not large, but it had a number of

competent musicians among its chaplains and minstrels. The duke sought to provide Du Fay with some benefices

and may have had a hand in his receiving those in Lausanne and Cossonay. By 29 July 1434 he had obtained the

parish church of St Loup, Versoix, and the duke nominated him to a canonicate in Geneva. The collation of this

benefice posed a problem in that the holder had to be a nobleman or a university graduate. Du Fay was a

commoner and as late as November 1435 did not have a university degree, which rules out the possibility,

discussed in earlier scholarship, that he obtained a law degree from Bologna or Rome. He had not collated the

Geneva benefice by February 1436, and there is no evidence that he ever held it. In the meantime a semiprebend

at Tournai was granted to him by the pope in early 1436 on the basis of the expectative of 1431, and on 9

September 1436 a new benefice, a canonicate at Cambrai, was granted to him by a motu proprio of Eugenius IV.

Du Fay was received as a canon of Cambrai, with Grenon acting as his representative, on 12 November 1436. The

quick collation of the benefice could be due to his having been a local cleric and also to his having paved the way

with the Cambrai authorities not long before his nomination. In August 1434 he had been granted leave from the

court of Savoy to visit his mother in Cambrai, and in October of that year was among the distinguished visitors

presented with gifts of bread and wine by the cathedral chapter. Shortly after his collation of the Cambrai

canonicate he resigned his other benefice at Cambrai, that in St Géry, which he had held since the beginning of his

career. Like the Geneva benefice, the canonicate at Cambrai was for a man with a law degree, and for the first

time in a papal letter of 5 May 1437 Du Fay is mentioned as having a Bachelor of Law degree, which he must have

obtained by papal fiat.

No works by Du Fay can be placed with certainty during his first sojourn at Savoy, although it has been suggested

that the ballade Se la face ay pale comes from that period (Fallows, 1982). A number of important works date from

his final stay in the papal chapel: these include Nuper rosarum flores, for the dedication of S Maria del Fiore,

Florence, on 25 May 1436, the plainchant prose Nuper almos rose flores, for the same occasion (Wright, 1994),

and the two other Florentine works, Mirandas parit and Salve flos Tusce. The song C’est bien raison, written for the

Duke of Ferrara, may date from this period, but it may otherwise be an earlier work, from 1433 (Fallows, 1982;

Lockwood).

Du Fay left the papal chapel at the end of May 1437 and returned to Savoy. In August of that year he was present

at a meeting of the chapter in Lausanne, and in April 1438 the Cambrai chapter named him and Robert Auclou as

delegates to the Council of Basle. Du Fay had also maintained good relations with the house of Burgundy, and in

May 1438, probably under pressure from the new provost, Bishop Jean of Burgundy, the chapter of St Donatian in

Bruges granted Du Fay the canonicate that Eugenius IV had requested for him in 1431.

Relations between Eugenius IV and the Council of Basle, which had been tense since the pope’s election,

deteriorated rapidly between 1436 and 1439. On 18 September 1437 Eugenius attempted to dissolve the Council

and open a new one in Bologna, and finally on 8 January 1438 a council sponsored by the pope opened in Ferrara.

On 14 February the council fathers who remained in Basle elected Du Fay’s former patron, Cardinal Louis Aleman,

president of the Council of Basle, and the following day Eugenius anathematized any decision by the Council. The

impasse lasted over a year, but on 25 June 1439 the Council declared Eugenius deposed, and in November

elected in his place Duke Amédée VIII of Savoy as Pope Felix V, thus creating a new schism. Du Fay, probably

realizing that this conflict between his two principal patrons threatened his most important benefices in Cambrai

and Bruges, left the court of Savoy even before the deposition of Eugenius IV. By 6 July 1439 Du Fay had entered

the service of the Duke of Burgundy, which most likely means that he had reached northern France by then; the

earliest record of his presence at Cambrai is his attendance at the general chapter of the cathedral on 9 December

1439.

Only one work can be securely dated to his second stay in Savoy, the motet Magnanime gentis, composed to

celebrate the peace between Louis, Prince of Piedmont, and his brother Robert, Count of Geneva, signed at Berne

on 3 May 1438. It has been proposed that the sequence Isti sunt due olive dates from this period, because it is

based on a plainchant melody used only in the dioceses of Lausanne and Geneva (Planchart, EMH, 1988).

Du Fay remained at Cambrai from December 1439 to March 1450, constituting the longest period of residence in

one place to this point in his life. A number of former members of the papal chapel were residents of Cambrai at

this time, connected not only with the cathedral but also with the churches of St Géry and Ste Croix. Du Fay’s life in

the 1440s is extensively documented in the cathedral records (see Wright, 1975, and Planchart, EMH, 1988, for

the most important aspects of his work during this decade). He took an active part in the administration of the

cathedral and, together with Nicolas Grenon and Symon Mellet, began an ambitious project to revise the liturgical

books of the cathedral and to compose and assemble a large repertory of polyphonic music for use in the services.

For a number of years, beginning in 1442, he was maître des petits vicaires. As the schism worsened he resigned

his benefices in Versoix and Lausanne (1442). On 23 April 1444 his mother died and was buried in the cathedral,

and on 14 August 1445 he moved to the house of the late canon Paul Beye, which he would retain until his death.

From the beginning of his reception as a canon of St Donatian he had trouble with the chapter over the collection

of his revenues. The relationship worsened steadily despite the support of the Duke of Burgundy, and in October

1447 Du Fay resigned the canonicate at St Donatian and was installed as a canon of Ste Waudru in Mons, which

he had visited, for the purpose of attending chapter meetings, during his time at Cambrai.

Much of what Du Fay wrote between 1439 and 1450 is lost, and what survives presents problems in terms of

dating and transmission. Works from this period include two isorhythmic motets,Moribus et genere and Fulgens

iubar, the first probably written in 1442 for the visit of Bishop Jean of Burgundy to Cambrai, and the second dated

either 1442 (Fallows, 1982) or 1447 (Planchart, 1995). The song Seigneur Leon was probably written as a homage

to Leonello d’Este on his accession as Marquis of Ferrara in 1442, and the Missa S Antonii de Padua, probably

composed for the dedication of Donatello’s altar in the basilica of S Antonio in Padua on 13 June 1450 (Fallows,

1982), thus dates from the end of this period. Planchart (EMH, 1988; 1995) proposed that five Proper cycles, which

he now accepts as authentic works, were composed as part of a set of six masses (one largely lost) for the weekly

series of votive masses of the Order of the Golden Fleece established by the Duke of Burgundy at the Ste

Chapelle in Dijon.

Planchart (EMH, 1988) also presented evidence that, in conjunction with the revision of the Cambrai liturgical

books, Du Fay undertook the compilation and composition of an extensive set of polyphonic Ordinaries and

Propers for the cathedral, copied into four volumes by Symon Mellet in 1449 (Wright, 1975), and which may have

prompted a large payment from the chapter to Du Fay in 1452.

With the death of Pope Eugenius IV on 23 February 1447 and the election of Nicholas V the tension between

Basle and Rome began to subside. On 7 April 1449 Felix V abdicated the schismatic papacy; the Council of Basle

elected Nicholas V on 19 April and dissolved itself on 25 April. By May 1450 Du Fay had left Cambrai. He is known

to have been in Turin from 26 May to 1 June 1450, and Fallows (1982) has proposed that he and his companions

were on their way to Padua to sing his Missa S Antonii de Padua. By 15 December he was back in Cambrai, and

on 4 March 1451 he attended the chapter meeting at Ste Waudru in Mons, at which time the Order of the Golden

Fleece was having its annual meeting in that city. A letter from Louis of Savoy to the composer, dated 22 October

(?1451), thanking him for a gift of cloth and referring to him asconseiller et maistre de chapelle, indicates that Du

Fay had restored his connection with the court of Savoy. On 21 April 1452 the Cambrai chapter voted to pay him

the equivalent of an entire year’s income from his prebend in recognition of his musical services. Shortly after that

he left Cambrai and travelled to Savoy, where he was to spend the next six years.

In contrast with the earlier period in Cambrai, documentary information for Du Fay during his last sojourn in Savoy

between 1452 and 1458 is very limited. The accounts of the chapel itself, which survive complete from 1449 to the

end of the century (Bouquet), pass over him in total silence, but in an autograph quittance of 8 November 1455 Du

Fay referred to himself as magister capellae of the duke. The accounts of the tesoreria generale note a gift of livery

to him in January 1455 without mentioning his status, and a letter from Pope Nicholas V to Duke Louis of Savoy

also refers to Du Fay as magister capellae, but it is clear that his position in the Savoy chapel was largely

ceremonial and that he was viewed as private counsellor and a friend of the ducal family. A letter (dated by Fallows

at 22 January 1456) from Du Fay to Lorenzo de’ Medici refers to a recent meeting with the court of France

(including most likely Jean de Ockeghem), probably at the signing of the treaty of St Pourçain in 1455, and

mentions his recent composition of some songs and four lamentations on the fall of Constantinople. Both Du Fay’s

letter and that of Nicholas V indicate that the composer was apparently trying to find patronage or a benefice that

would allow him to remain in Savoy or in Italy in his old age. In the event no substantial benefice was available and

in September of 1458 he was in Besançon, on his journey back to Cambrai. By October 1458 he had arrived in

Cambrai where, apart from a few short journeys largely connected with his canonicate at Ste Waudru, he was to

spend the rest of his life.

Two works can be securely placed in this period in Savoy. The first is the lamentation for the fall of

Constantinople, O tres piteulx/Omnes amici eius, and the other is the set of plainchants for a new feast, the

‘Recollection omnium festorum Beate Marie Virginis’, established by a foundation of Michel de Beringhen at

Cambrai, and for which some of the texts were written by Gilles Carlier (EGIDIUS CARLERIUS). However, a number

of other works surely date from these years as well, most likely among them the Missa ‘Se la face ay pale’, and a

number of chansons composed on texts by poets of the circle of Charles d’Orléans, who were present at St

Pourçain in 1455. These songs include Malheureulx cueur and Les douleurs. His only late Italian song, Dona

gentile, must also date from this period.

On his return to Cambrai Du Fay resumed his activities as a canon of the cathedral, becoming master of the petits

vicaires in 1459, and was master of the petit coffre for a number of years. The cathedral accounts also indicate that

he arranged for Symon Mellet to copy a considerable amount of polyphonic music for the cathedral. Furthermore,

he renewed contact with Guillaume Modiator, called Malbecque, a colleague from the papal chapel, who was his

receiver for a small benefice he had in Watiebraine (near Soignies), and perhaps through him came to know

Johannes Regis, who succeeded Malbecque as Du Fay’s receiver when Malbecque died in 1465. In 1460 Du Fay

took part in negotiations, ultimately unsuccessful, to appoint Regis magister puerorum at Cambrai.

The composer renewed his ties with the court of Burgundy. In 1457 Duke Philip ‘the Good’ requested permission

from King Charles VII to recruit in France for a crusade; this may have been the occasion for the writing of the

combinative chanson Il sera pour vous/L’homme armé, which mentions Simon le Breton, a Burgundian chaplain,

who was listed as one of the chaplains to accompany the crusade. The work is preserved anonymously in the

Mellon Chansonnier (US-NHu91), and Planchart considers that the only composer close enough to Simon and

whose style the chanson resembles is Du Fay (although see MORTON, ROBERT for a different opinion). It may also

be that the L’homme armé masses by both Du Fay and Ockeghem date from about this period.

During this last period in Cambrai Du Fay developed a close friendship with a fellow canon, Pierre de Ranchicourt,

and when the latter was made Bishop of Arras in 1463 he retained rooms in Du Fay’s house and visited him often.

Other visitors included Tinctoris (in 1460) and Ockeghem (in 1463). One of Du Fay’s motets was sung on the

occasion of a visit by Charles the Bold to Cambrai in 1460; on a later visit, a tense meeting between the courts of

Burgundy and France in 1468, Du Fay may have met with both Ockeghem and Busnoys. The dedication of

Cambrai Cathedral in 1472 also brought a number of visitors to the city, probably including Compère, whose

motetOmnium bonorum plena, which mentions Du Fay, was most likely composed for this occasion (Montagna).

Planchart (1972, 1993) has argued that Du Fay’s Missa ‘Ave regina celorum’ was used for the dedication, even

though it was probably originally intended as a mass for his own obit. In addition to the visitors, he kept in contact

with Rome and Florence, as is shown by correspondence between him and Antonio Squarcialupi, and by

documentary evidence that he sent music to Rome.

At the end of his career Du Fay had a relatively small number of benefices. He retained his canonicates at Cambrai

and at Ste Waudru, as well as the parish church in Wattebraine. A canonicate at Condé was exchanged for a

chaplaincy at Ohain (Belgium). In 1470 he bought some land in Beersel to provide an income for the establishment

of his obit on 5 August, and in 1472 he supplemented the fund by the purchase of a smaller piece of land in

Wodecq. He drew up his will in July 1474 and died on 24 November of that year. He had requested that as he lay

dying the cathedral singers should sing his Ave regina celorum, but owing to the shortness of time this could not be

carried out and the antiphon was sung at his obsequies instead. The will and its execution reveal that Du Fay died

a wealthy man but with no close relatives. The year after his death Mellet copied a number of lamentations by

Busnoys, Hemart and Ockeghem; these are lost, but were possibly composed in memory of Du Fay.

A number of works can be dated to this last period in Cambrai. There is strong evidence that theMissa ‘L’homme

armé’ was written between 1459 and 1461. The Missa ‘Ecce ancilla’ was copied into the Cambrai choirbook in

1463 or 1464, the troped antiphon Ave regina celorum in 1464 or 1465, and the Missa ‘Ave regina celorum’,

probably begun after Du Fay established his obit in 1470, was copied at Cambrai in 1473 or 1474. Fallows (1982)

suggested that the rondeau En triumphant might be Du Fay’s response to the death of Binchois in 1460. Payments

to Symon Mellet point to the existence of a number of late works that are now lost, including a Missa pro defunctis.

Furthermore, there are references as late as 1507 to the existence of an Officium defunctorum that the Order of

the Golden Fleece sang as a work of Du Fay (Prizer).

Two representations of Du Fay have survived: one is the well-known illumination in a copy of Martin le Franc’s Le

champion des dames (F-Pn fr.12476), and the other is an image of the composer kneeling, carved on his funeral

monument. The anonymous illuminator of Le champion des dames probably knew the composer, as his work has

been identified by art historians in manuscripts copied for Cambrai, notably the breviary of Paul Beye. The right

side of the composer’s face in the funeral monument has suffered some damage and abrasions, since the stone

was used as a well cover after the destruction of the cathedral, but the images, although simplified likenesses,

clearly depict the same person.

2. Posthumous reputation.

Throughout his life Du Fay was regarded as the leading composer of his age. Most of his career spanned a period

of relative stylistic stability, and he was largely successful in incorporating new stylistic traits that came to the fore

during his life, including the contenance angloise of the 1430s, the scoring and contrapuntal techniques found in

the music of the master of the Missa ‘Caput’, and some of the elements of the music of Ockeghem and the young

Busnoys. In doing so he achieved an extraordinary synthesis of the musical language of the mid-15th century while

retaining a number of older traits, particularly in his use of chromaticism. The period immediately following his

death, however, was one of relatively fast stylistic change and Du Fay’s music seems not to have made a large

impact on that of composers of Josquin’s generation. Few works from that generation use Du Fay’s music as a

source, a notable exception being Guillaume Faugues’sMissa ‘Le serviteur’, based on one of Du Fay’s late

rondeaux. Equally telling is the virtual absence of Du Fay’s music from most sources produced around 1500,

particularly the early printed anthologies of secular and sacred music. And yet there are documented performances

of his work in Brussels as late as 1507 (Prizer), Cambrai in 1515 (Wright, 1978) and until 1535 (Planchart, 1995).

In addition, theorists continued to cite several of his works until close to the middle of the 16th century. His name

continued to be mentioned as one of the important composers of his age by theorists and historians until the

beginning of the scholarly recovery of medieval music in the 19th century, although it is unlikely that most 17th-

and 18th-century writers, with the possible exception of Padre G.B. Martini, knew a note of his music. In the same

manner, works dealing with the history of the church in France continued to mention him as a churchman, with no

awareness of his importance as a composer.

3. Works: general.

Du Fay cultivated virtually all genres of polyphonic music known in his day and his approach to composition varied

slightly depending on the genre. His works include songs in the formes fixes, plainchant settings where the chant is

paraphrased in the cantus or another of the upper voices, freely-composed settings (cantilenas) of liturgical, non-

liturgical or ceremonial texts and cantus-firmus compositions including motets and settings of the Ordinary of the

Mass. An important subcategory of plainchant settings is formed by pieces composed in fauxbourdon, where the

cantus and tenor are written out but a third voice replicates the cantus line a 4th below.

In terms of compositional approach there are not always marked differences between the first three of the four

categories mentioned above. In virtually all cases Du Fay’s point of departure was a cantus-tenor contrapuntal

framework expanded by one or two voices. In the case of the plainchant settings the voice that elaborates the

chant is the cantus of such a framework. In the cantus-firmus works Du Fay began early on to utilize a double tenor

as part of the framework with the cantus, sometimes conflating both tenors into a solus tenor. This is the texture

prevalent in virtually all the four-voice isorhythmic motets and the cantus-firmus masses.

There are works where the categories are blurred. The isorhythmic motet Supremum est mortalibus has sections in

simple fauxbourdon, some of the cantilenas present complex rhythmic surfaces comparable to those of the

isorhythmic motets, and some of the songs make use of cantus-firmus procedures in contexts so simple and

compressed as to appear ironic. O tres piteulx/Omnes amici eius is a hybrid of cantilena and motet, and in the late

works such as Ave regina celorum (tentatively dated 1463) and the masses ‘Ave regina celorum’ and ‘Ecce

ancilla’the techniques of cantus firmus, plainchant paraphrase and free composition are fused in a remarkable

synthesis.

The hallmarks of Du Fay’s style are a balanced and carefully wrought melodic writing style that early on consisted

of a well-articulated succession of small motivic cells and became considerably more spun out in the 1440s; a clear

and transparent contrapuntal structure with well-defined cadences, closely tied to the rhetorical structure of the text

(prompting a number of scholars, beginning with Besseler, 1950, to consider his music as an important step

towards the emergence of tonal harmony); and a rich rhythmic surface that retained some of the layering of fast

and slow motion characteristics of much late medieval music, even though it became more and more

homogeneous and flowing in the later works. In early works the rhythmic activity and the small motifs articulating

the melodies call attention to themselves, while in the later music both are subsumed into the smooth flow of

sonorities. Finally, an important aspect of Du Fay’s writing that links it with the music of his predecessors and early

contemporaries but separates it from later music is the discursive use of chromatic alteration (for discussion of this

see Boone, 1987 and 1996, and Brothers, 1997).

4. Chant settings.

More than half of Du Fay’s surviving works consist of chant settings, where one of the voices, usually the cantus,

follows the contour, text and phrasing of a plainchant melody with a small amount of elaboration. This melody is

supported by a tenor and the texture is expanded by a contratenor, or, in the simplest cases, by fauxbourdon. A

few works survive both with fauxbourdon and with a composed contratenor (ex.1).

Ex.1. Christe, redemptor omnium/Ex Patre (a) Version with fauxbourdon (showing paraphrased plainchant melody) (b) Version with

composed contratenor

This kind of polyphony was probably heard not as an independent composition but as an elaboration of the

plainchant. It is found in the work of other composers of the late 14th century and the early 15th, and is related to

English discant and the practice of improvised polyphony on a chant. Still, an examination of the tenor in ex.1 or a

comparison of the two elaborations shows the skill and subtlety with which Du Fay handled the simplest material.

His works in this manner cover most of the liturgical categories: they include all the surviving hymns, sequences

and Magnificatsettings, most of the Office antiphon and responsory settings, some Glorias and the possible Kyrie

cycle (Planchart, EMH, 1988). Until recently it was thought that all of Du Fay’s chant settings came from the early

part of his career, but the identification of the Missa S Antonii de Padua and the masses for the Order of the

Golden Fleece show that he continued writing such works well into the 1450s: the Propers in these pieces are all

chant settings, albeit with considerably more elaboration both in the chant-derived voice and in the newly

composed parts, which are occasionally expanded to include a second contratenor. From the description of the

lost Missa pro defunctis it seems that this work was a series of chant settings as well.

5. Cantilena settings.

Du Fay’s cantilenas have comparatively few antecedents: they go back no further than the music of English and

northern Italian composers working at the end of the 14th century. His works cover a relatively wide stylistic field: at

one extreme they closely resemble simple chant elaborations (except that here none of the voices is derived from

plainchant), as in the earliest of the survivingAve regina settings (v, 120), and at the other they match the

complexity of the isorhythmic motets, as is the case with Inclita stella maris. Within these wide boundaries they

present a considerable variety of textures and some, such as Flos florum, are stylistically close to Du Fay’s more

florid secular works. Formally the cantilenas are his freest and least predictable works and a number are unique

not only in his output but in the entire 15th-century repertory. In a sense, more than a specific genre, these works

represent a group of closely related compositional procedures and strategies that Du Fay employed also in the

songs and in isolated settings of the Ordinary of the Mass. Texts set in this way may be liturgical, devotional or

ceremonial, but virtually all are in Latin. The exceptions are the well-known Vergene bella and O tres

piteulx/Omnes amici eius. Closely related to the cantilenas is the famous troped Ave regina celorum (v, 124), but

this is a hybrid work incorporating cantus-firmus procedure, his only work that can be classified as a fully fledged

example of the new kind of motet cultivated by composers such as Ockeghem, Busnoys and Regis. It represents a

summation of all Du Fay’s compositional strategies, including paraphrase, cantus firmus and extended passages of

free composition that are reminiscent of his cantilenas.

6. Motets.

Under this heading are considered only those works that Du Fay would have termed a motet, that is, what is now

termed an isorhythmic motet. In them Du Fay was working within a tradition that went back over a century before

his first efforts in the genre. It is clear that he was aware of the work of Vitry and Machaut, but that his immediate

models were largely works from northern Italy and England, particularly those of Ciconia and Dunstaple (Cumming,

1987, 1994; Allsen; Lütteken). Du Fay’s motets have been studied in considerable detail because, beyond their

intrinsic musical interest, the majority of them can be associated with specific places and thus provide valuable

biographical information. The earliest, Vasilissa ergo gaude, dates from 1420, and the last, Fulgens iubar, possibly

from 1447. The earlier motets show Du Fay as an imaginative and able follower of Ciconia, emulating the brilliant

sound of the older composer’s works but adapting his techniques to produce denser contrapuntal textures that

derive from northern French music of the late 14th century. Most of the motets employ isorhythm in all voices, and

several use multiple tenors, some derived from plainchant (Ecclesie militantis; Nuper rosarum flores), and some

with a newly composed second tenor (Moribus et genere; Fulgens iubar ecclesie). In the motets where there is

more than one talea to a given color the isorhythm is extended to all voices within each section, and in the late

motets extensive use is made of isomelic returns (melodic and textual recurrences) to articulate the structure of the

work. Several of the early motets have an extended introitus before the entrance of the tenor voice and the start of

the isorhythmic structure, and in Supremum est mortalibus the introitus and several interludes are in fauxbourdon.

In the latest motets the introitus is incorporated into the isorhythm itself by the inclusion of a series of rests at the

beginning of the tenor that are then taken into the talea pattern. A few also conclude with a short coda outside the

isorhythmic structure. Du Fay cited the impressive coda of Nuper rosarum flores at the end of his last

motet, Fulgens iubar. In all the motets the plainchant tenors are chosen for their emblematic symbolism, and

in Supremum est mortalibus a second chant, the antiphon Isti sunt due olive, is cited for the same reason. All the

motets subject the tenor to mensural transformations that result in proportional relationships between the sections;

in a number of cases these relationships also carry a symbolic meaning, as is the case with Nuper rosarum flores,

where the proportions between the sections, 6:4:2:3, replicate the reported measurements of the Temple of

Solomon (Wright, 1994). Just as the earlier motets appear to be Du Fay’s response to the music of Ciconia, the

later ones, particularly those after Nuper rosarum flores, appear to be his response to English music, not only the

motets of Dunstaple but the four-part writing of the ‘Caput’ master.

7. Music for the Mass.

Du Fay’s earliest settings of the Mass show that early on he was acquainted with the music of Loqueville and the

French traditions of the late 14th century, but also with the music of Ciconia, Zacar da Teramo and the Lantins. His

earliest work in this genre is a Kyrie-Sanctus-Agnus cycle, related to a work of Loqueville and probably composed

for the Council of Konstanz (Planchart, 1993). Most of his mass music from before the 1440s consists of isolated

movements or pairs composed as plainchant settings or in free settings related to the cantilenas or the secular

works. Only a few of these movements use a cantus firmus, and the organization of the Sanctus-Agnus pairs is

based on alternations between duos and full-texture sections.

Two complete mass cycles survive from before 1440: these are the Missa sine nomine [‘Resvelliés vous’] and

the Missa S Jacobi. The former shares musical material and gestures with the balladeResvelliés vous, and the

Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus are interrelated by opening gestures (including ‘plainchant’ intonations written by

Du Fay) and extended hocket sections at the end. The Credo shows less of a connection to the other movements

and its place in the cycle has been questioned (Hamm, 1960), but it too echoes aspects of the ballade. The Missa

S Jacobi is a plenary mass, where an Ordinary interrelated by textural alternations and mensural shifts is

complemented by motet-like settings of the Propers, ending with a simple fauxbourdon for the communion, which

may be the earliest surviving example of the genre.

In 1439 or early 1440 Du Fay undertook to write the extended cycle of Propers for the Order of the Golden Fleece

(identified as his work by Feininger, 1947, and Planchart, EMH, 1988). During the following decade he was

concerned with the revision of the liturgy at Cambrai, as discussed above. Most of the music from this period is

lost, but its character may be surmised from the one surviving cycle written (according to Fallows, 1982), towards

the end of the 1440s. It was published as the Missa S Antonii Viennensis (ii, 47), but it has been shown to be

the Missa S Antonii de Padua that is cited in letters and in treatises by Spataro, Tinctoris and Gaffurius (Fallows,

1982). Furthermore, Planchart (EMH, 1988) has suggested that it is in fact a double plenary cycle with two sets of

Propers, one for St Anthony of Padua and a second for St Francis. The Propers are plainchant paraphrases; the

Ordinary begins with a plainchant paraphrase Kyrie but continues with four free movements in cantilena style that

makes conspicuous use of rhythmic complexities, traits also found in the cycles for the Order of the Golden Fleece.

In the 1450s Du Fay turned his attention to the English tradition of mass cycles based on a cantus firmus, and the

last four masses securely attributed to him belong in this category. The first of these, the Missa ‘Se la face ay pale’,

based on the tenor of his own ballade, is built along the lines of his late isorhythmic motets and shows his

awareness of works such as the Missa ‘Caput’. Head motifs and carefully placed returns of musical material from

one movement to another are all present in these works. In the Missa ‘Se la face ay pale’ some of these traits

clearly recall the isomelic returns in the motets, while in later masses the returning material is presented in a more

varied and flexible form. Similarly the later masses move further away from the layered textures of the motet and

towards the more homogeneous musical texture found in the music of Ockeghem and Busnoys. Greater use of

imitation in the later masses means that melodic elements of the tenor appear in the other voices as well.

The Missa ‘L’homme armé’, Du Fay’s most extended work, shows surprising returns to the rhythmic intricacy found

in some of the works of the 1440s, and in the masses ‘Ecce ancilla’ and ‘Ave regina’ the tenor (and sometimes the

bass in the latter) is presented with its antiphon text instead of the text of the Ordinary. The Missa ‘Ave regina’ also

borders on parody since it uses not only a cantus firmus but contains extended citations of the entire polyphonic

fabric of his motet of 1463. This mass appears to be a deliberate summation of virtually all Du Fay’s approaches to

mass composition.

8. Plainchant melodies.

In 1457 Egidius Carlerius and Du Fay were commissioned to produce the texts and plainchants for a Marian feast

that Michel de Beringhen was instituting in his will, the ‘Recollectio omnium festorum Beate Marie Virginis’. They

adapted some Marian chants for the feast, but by and large wrote entirely new pieces for the day and night Office

as well as for parts of the Mass. Du Fay’s plainchants were identified and studied by Haggh (1988). The antiphons

and responsories of the Office are ordered numerically by mode and each melody is composed with careful

attention to modal structure in terms of division into tetrachords and pentachords (a trait also found in the songs).

Planchart (EMH, 1988) noted that Du Fay may be the composer of a plainchant setting of the introit for St Anthony

Abbot, Scitote quoniam, found only in the Cambrai books, and Wright (1994) attributed to Du Fay the prose of the

Mass for the dedication of Florence Cathedral, Nuper almos rose flores.

9. Songs.

Du Fay left a large corpus of songs covering all the formes fixes, plus one or two combinative chansons. The

majority of the songs are rondeaux, which he composed throughout his career. The ballades are all early works

and the few virelais or bergerettes are relatively late. Both of the combinative chansons are also late. A small

number of works to Italian texts, which do not follow any of the known poetic forms, are also early apart from the

exceptional rondeau Dona gentile, which must date from the 1450s. Most of the songs have a three-part texture

using cantus, tenor and contratenor, but a number of four-voice works are more or less evenly distributed

throughout his career. In a few cases, such as in Pour l’amour de ma doulce amye, the fourth voice is not by Du

Fay. Imitation is present in both early and late works, but becomes slightly more prevalent in the later pieces,

particularly between the cantus and the tenor. Straightforward canons and mensuration canons also appear,

although infrequently, in early and late works. In most sources text is set only to the cantus, although a

considerable number of pieces have text also in the tenor and some in the contratenor. In the late songs the

imitation between cantus and tenor invites text underlay of the latter; however, it is clear that underlay in the

sources was frequently a matter of scribal preference. The early songs show an extraordinary range of textures,

particularly in terms of rhythmic and motivic organization, and some of them are quite idiosyncratic (for

exampleResvelliés vous, Ma belle dame souveraine, Hé compaignons). The subject matter of the texts also ranges

from courtly love to scenes of bourgeois conviviality. Textures in the late songs are smoother and the rhythmic and

melodic differentiation between the voices is less pronounced. The texts of the later works are in general closer to

the stylistic canons of courtly love poetry. A few of the very late songs, such as Dieu gard la bone, show that Du

Fay was aware of the style of the secular works of Ockeghem and particularly Busnoys. Du Fay’s text settings

throughout his career pay exquisite attention to the detail in the poetry and to rhetorical and poetic structure, and

show an acute concern for the tonal and melodic balance of his lines.

10. Lost works.

A number of works by Du Fay that are mentioned in 15th- and 16th-century records are no longer extant; others

probably survive anonymously and are unidentifiable. The lost works include three lamentations on the fall of

Constantinople, mentioned by Du Fay in his letter to the Medici, and a number of works copied by Symon Mellet in

the 1460s, namely a Magnificat in the 7th mode (1462–3), the hymn O quam glorifica (1463–4), a prose for St Mary

Magdalene (Laus tibi Christe, 1463–4) and the Missa pro defunctis (1470); this latter was associated in later

performances with a lost Office for the Dead, as discussed above.

The identification of the cycle of weekly Propers for the Order of the Golden Fleece also points to a lost cycle for

the Lady Mass, of which only fragments survive. The possibility that Du Fay wrote a Proper cycle for Cambrai in

the 1440s would also imply a number of lost works. Evidence for the existence of these Propers is found not only in

the anonymous fragments that have been attributed to Du Fay by Feininger and Planchart, but also in the decision

by the Cambrai chapter in 1515 that an Epiphany motet being sung at that time should be replaced by another

‘drawn from the works of the late Du Fay’ (Wright, 1975). A Mass for St Anthony Abbot mentioned in the execution

of Du Fay’s will has been identified with an anonymous work surviving in Trent 89 (I-TRmp), but the work lacks

some movements.

Finally, one or possibly two works of music theory are now lost: these are a Musica, cited in the notes of another

music treatise, and a Tractatus de musica mensurata et de proportionibus, which Fétis reported seeing with an

ascription to Du Fay, and which was sold to an English bookseller in 1824 and has never been traced.

11. Problems of attribution.

Even in the 15th century a number of works circulated with incorrect or conflicting attributions to Du Fay. This

created a particular problem because one of the works incorrectly ascribed to him, the English Missa ‘Caput’, was

available early on in a modern edition and assumed a central position in the evaluation of his style. Further

problems were created by the often unexplained rejection in Besseler’s edition of a number of works with

ascriptions in the sources, particularly hymns and songs. A number of these rejections have been shown to be the

result of stylistic analysis based on faulty transcriptions of the music, or of historical assumptions not supported by

any evidence (Planchart, EMH, 1988; Fallows, 1995).

A number of anonymous works have been attributed to Du Fay by modern scholars. Hamm’s attributions (1960) of

a number of sequences, the motet Elizabeth Zacharie, and a Mass Ordinary in I-Rvat S Pietro B80, have been

tentatively accepted by most scholars, and Allsen provided further evidence for the case of Elizabeth Zacharie.

Feininger’s attributions of the masses ‘Veterem hominem’, ‘Christus surrexit’ and ‘Puisque je vis’ have been

rejected. The first of these is a twin of the Missa ‘Caput’ and was known to Thomas Morley as an English work; the

second is based on a German Leise and is part of a little-understood repertory of German masses; the third has

remained largely undiscussed in later scholarship. The Missa ‘La mort de St Gothard’, ascribed to Du Fay briefly by

Feininger and accepted without explanation by Besseler (ii, 105), is probably a work of Johannes Martini

(Nitschke).

In addition Feininger (1947) attributed to Du Fay a number of Proper cycles in Trent 88 (I-TRmp). These

attributions were initially treated with considerable scepticism but a considerable amount of new evidence has

been uncovered confirming most of Feininger’s attributions (Planchart, 1972;EMH, 1988; 1995; Fallows, 1982).

Later attempts to question them (Gerber, 1994) appear to be based on faulty analysis.

The difficulty of attributing any work on the basis of purely stylistic criteria is illustrated by the case of the Mass for

St Anthony Abbot, whose attribution to Du Fay is still debated: Fallows rejected it on stylistic grounds, whereas

Planchart (EMH, 1988) believes that its liturgical connection with Cambrai means that it can be counted as part of

Du Fay’s oeuvre.

12. Sources.

Du Fay’s reputation in the 15th century is attested by the large number of surviving works and by the geographical

spread of manuscripts containing his music. His works survive in nearly 100 manuscripts originating in Austria,

Bohemia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Scotland and Spain, dating from the second quarter of

the 15th century to the first quarter of the 16th. Particularly important sources for his music are the early Italian

anthologies, GB-ObCan.misc.213, I-Bc Q15 and I-Bu 2216, which transmit virtually all his surviving music up to

about 1435. Much of his ceremonial music appears also in a carefully copied source, I-MOe α.X.1.11, copied in

Ferrara in about 1445, and some of the very late works appear in a source relatively close to the composer, B-

Br 5557. For much of the music that he wrote in the 1440s and 50s, however, we have only copies very distantly

related to the composer, such as the Trent codices, although in the case of the songs, manuscripts copied in the

Loire valley and in Savoy transmit sound versions of his works.

13. Editions.

Du Fay’s music first became available in modern transcriptions as examples in studies by Kiesewetter, Rochlitz

and Ambros. Important works were edited by Haberl, in several of the volumes of music from the Trent codices in

the DTÖ series, and in Stainer’s influential edition of music from GB-Ob Can.misc.213. Important editions of

sacred and secular works were published by Besseler (1932) and Gerber (1937). A systematic publication of the

complete works was begun by Guillaume De Van, with the cantilena motets (1947), the isorhythmic motets (1947)

and two masses (1949). On De Van’s death Besseler took over the editorship in 1951 and completed the edition in

1966, reissuing the works edited by De Van. Besseler’s edition, however, is marred by typographical errors,

incomplete transcriptions, unreported changes in mensural reduction and lacunae in the critical reports. A number

of those occurring in the second and fourth volumes of the edition were corrected by Bockholdt (1960); the sixth

volume was revised and corrected by Fallows in 1995.

Bibliography

A comprehensive bibliography to 1985 is given in D. Fallows, Dufay (London, 1982, 2/1987); the following bibliography contains only the most important studies up to that date

LockwoodMRF

SpataroC

StrohmR

J. Houdoy : Histoire artistique de la cathédrale de Cambrai (Paris and Lille, 1880/R)

F.X. Haberl : Bausteine für Musikgeschichte (Leipzig, 1885–8/R)

J., J.F.R. and C. Stainer : Dufay and his Contemporaries (London, 1898/R)

C. van den Borren : Guillaume Dufay: son importance dans l’évolution de la musique au XVe siècle(Brussels, 1925)

F. Baix : ‘La carrière “bénéficiale” de Guillaume Dufay (vers 1398–1474): notes et documents’, Bulletin de l’Institut

historique belge de Rome, viii (1928), 265–72

H. Besseler, ed.: Guillaume Dufay: zwölf geistliche und weltliche Lieder, Cw, xix (1932)

R. Gerber, ed.: Guillaume Dufay: sämtliche Hymnen, Cw, xlix (1937/R)

L. Feininger, ed.: Auctorum anonymorum missarum propria XVI quorum XI Gulielmo Dufay auctori adscribenda sunt,

Monumenta polyphoniae liturgicae, 2nd ser., i (Rome, 1947)

G. De Van, ed.: Guglielmi Dufay opera omnia (Rome, 1947–9) [4 fascicles published of 20 planned: i: Motetti qui et

cantiones vocantur (1947); ii: Motetti isorithmici dicti (1948); iii: Missa sine nomine (1949); iv:Missa Sancti

Jacobi (1949)]

H. Besseler : Bourdon und Fauxbourdon (Leipzig, 1950, rev., enlarged 2/1974 by P. Gülke)

M. Bukofzer : Studies in Medieval & Renaissance Music (New York, 1950)

H. Besseler : ‘Neue Dokumente zum Leben und Schaffen Dufays’, AMw, ix (1952), 159–76

D. Plamenac : ‘An Unknown Composition by Dufay?’, MQ, xl (1954), 190–200 [Fr. trans., RBM, viii (1954), 75–83]

R. Bockholdt : Die frühen Messenkompositionen von Guillaume Dufay (Tutzing, 1960)

C. Hamm : ‘The Manuscript San Pietro B80’, RBM, xiv (1960), 40–55

C. Hamm : ‘Dating a Group of Dufay Works’, JAMS, xv (1962), 65–71

C. Hamm : A Chronology of the Works of Guillaume Dufay based on a Study of Mensural Practice(Princeton, NJ, 1964)

F.A. Gallo : ‘Citazioni da una trattato di Dufay’, CHM, iv (1966), 149–52

M.-T. Bouquet : ‘La cappella musicale dei duchi di Savoia dal 1450 al 1500’, RIM, iii (1968), 233–85

W. Nitschke : Studien zu den Cantus-firmus-Messen Guillaume Dufays (Berlin, 1968)

H. Schoop : Entstehung und Verwendung der Handschrift Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canonici misc. 213(Berne, 1971)

A.E. Planchart : ‘Guillaume Dufay’s Masses: Notes and Revisions’, MQ, lviii (1972), 1–23

Dufay Conference: Brooklyn, NY, 1974

D. Fallows : ‘Two more Dufay Songs Reconstructed’, EMc, iii (1975), 358–60

C. Monson : ‘Stylistic Inconsistencies in a Kyrie attributed to Dufay’, JAMS, xxviii (1975), 245–67

C. Wright : ‘Dufay at Cambrai: Discoveries and Revisions’, JAMS, xxviii (1975), 175–229

C. Wright : ‘Performance Practices at the Cathedral of Cambrai, 1475–1550’, MQ, lxiv (1978), 295–328

R. Bockholdt : ‘Die Hymnen der Handschrift Cambrai 6: zwei unbekannte Vertonungen von

Dufay?’, TVNM,xxix (1979), 75–91

M. Bent : ‘The Songs of Dufay: some Questions of Authenticity’, EMc, viii (1980), 454–9

D. Fallows : Dufay (London, 1982, 2/1987)

D. Fallows : ‘Dufay’s Most Important Work: Reflections on the Career of his Mass for St Anthony of

Padua’,MT, cxxiii (1982), 467–70

D.M. Randel : ‘Dufay the Reader’, Studies in the History of Music, i (1983), 38–78

D. Fallows : ‘Dufay and the Mass Proper Cycles of Trent 88’, I codici musicali trentini: Trent 1985, 46–59

W.F. Prizer : ‘Music and Ceremonial in the Low Countries: Philip the Fair and the Order of the Golden

Fleece’,EMH, v (1985), 113–54

W. Arlt : ‘Musik und Text’, Mf, xxxvii (1986), 272–80

M. Perz : ‘The Lvov Fragments: a Source for Works of Dufay, Josquin, Petrus de Domarto, and Petrus Grudenca in

15th-Century Poland’, TVNM, xxxvi (1986), 26–51

R.C. Wegman : ‘New Data concerning the Origins and Chronology of Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Manuscript

5557’, TVNM, xxxvi (1986), 5–25

A.W. Atlas : ‘Gematria, Marriage Numbers, and Golden Sections in Dufay’s “Resveillies vous”’, AcM, lix(1987), 111–26

G.M. Boone : Dufay’s Early Chansons: Chronology and Style in the Manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canonici misc.

213 (diss., Harvard U., 1987)

J.E. Cumming : Concord out of Discord: Occasional Motets of the Early Quattrocento (diss., U. of California,

Berkeley, 1987)

D. Fallows : ‘The Contenance angloise: English Influence on Continental Composers of the Fifteenth

Century’, Renaissance Studies, i (1987), 189–208

B. Haggh : ‘The Celebration of the “Recollectio Festorum Beatae Mariae Virginis”, 1457–1987’, IMSCR XIV: Bologna

1987, iii, 559–71

G. Montagna : ‘Caron, Hayne, Compère: a Transmission Reassessment’, EMH, vii (1987), 107–57

R.C. Wegman : ‘The Twelfth Gathering of Brussels, Koninklijke Biblioteek, Manuscript 5557: a New Dufay

Concordance’, Liber Amicorum Chris Maas, ed. R. Wegman and E. Vetter (Amsterdam, 1987), 15–25

D. Crawford : ‘Guillaume Dufay, Hellenism, and Humanism’, Music from the Middle Ages through the Twentieth Century:

Essays in Honor of Gwynn S. McPeek, ed. C.P. Comberiati and M.C. Steel (New York,1988), 81–93

A.E. Planchart : ‘Guillaume Du Fay’s Benefices and his Relationship to the Court of Burgundy’, EMH, viii(1988), 117–71

A.E. Planchart : ‘What’s in a Name? Reflections on some Works of Guillaume Du Fay’, EMc, xvi (1988), 165–75

L. Nys : ‘Un relief tournaisien conservé au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lille: la stèle funeraire de Guillaume Dufay

(+1474), chanoine de Notre-Dame de Cambrai’, Mémoires de la Société royale d’histoire et d’archéologie de

Tournai, vi (1989), 5–24

E. Schroeder : ‘Dissonance Placement and Stylistic Change in the Fifteenth Century: Tinctoris’s Rules and Dufay’s

Practice’, JM, vii (1989), 366–89

R. Strohm : ‘Messzyklen über deutsche Lieder in den Trienter Kodices’, Liedstudien: Wolfgang Osthoff zum 60.

Geburtstag, ed. M. Just and R. Wiesend (Tutzing, 1989), 77–106

N. Gossen : ‘Helas mon dueil, a ce cop sui je mort: Allgemeines und Besonderes in einem Chanson-Text von Guillaume

Dufay’, Basler Jb für historische Musikpraxis, xiv (1990), 37–57

A. Kirkman : ‘Some Early Fifteenth-Century Fauxbourdons by Dufay and his Contemporaries: a Study in Liturgically-

Motivated Musical Style’, TVNM, xl/1 (1990), 3–35

T. Brothers : ‘Vestiges of the Isorhythmic Tradition in Mass and Motet, ca. 1450–1475’, JAMS, xliv (1991), 1–56

R. Nosow : ‘The Equal Discantus Motet Style after Ciconia’, MD, xlv (1991), 221–75

R.C. Wegman : ‘Petrus de Domarto’s Missa Spiritus almus and the Early History of the Four-Voice Mass in the Fifteenth

Century’, EMH, x (1991), 235–303

J.M. Allsen : Style and Intertextuality in the Isorhythmic Motet, 1400–1440 (diss., U. of Wisconsin, 1992)

C.A. Reynolds : ‘The Counterpoint of Allusion in Fifteenth-Century Masses’, JAMS, lxv (1992), 228–60

L. Lütteken : Guillaume Dufay und die isorhythmische Motette: Gattungstradition und Werkcharacter an der Schwelle

der Neuzeit (Hamburg, 1993)

A.E. Planchart : ‘The Early Career of Guillaume Du Fay’, JAMS, xlvi (1993), 341–68

J.E. Cumming : ‘The Aesthetics of the Medieval Motet and Cantilena’, Historical Performance, vii (1994), 71–83

R.L. Gerber : ‘Dufay’s Style and the Question of Cyclic Unity in the Trent 88 Mass Proper Cycles’, I codici musicali

trentini: Trent 1994, 107–19

C. Wright : ‘Dufay’s Nuper rosarum flores, King Solomon’s Temple, and the Veneration of the

Virgin’, JAMS,xlvii (1994), 395–441

D. Fallows : The Songs of Guillaume Dufay: Critical Commentary to the Revision of Corpus mensurabilis musicae, ser.

1, vol. VI, MSD, xlvii (1995)

A.E. Planchart : ‘Notes on Guillaume Du Fay’s Last Works’, JM, xiii (1995), 55–72

C.A. Reynolds : Papal Patronage and the Music of St Peter’s, 1380–1513 (Berkeley, 1995)

R.C. Wegman : ‘Miserere-supplicanti-Dufay: the Creation and Transmission of Guillaume Dufay’s Missa Ave regina

celorum ’, JM, xiii (1995), 18–54

G. Boone : ‘Tonal Color in Dufay’, Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts: Studies in Honor of Lewis Lockwood,

ed. J.A. Owens and A. Cummings (Warren, MI, 1996), 57–99

A.E. Planchart : ‘Guillaume Du Fay’s Second Style’, ibid., 307–40

T. Brothers : Chromatic Beauty in the Late Medieval Chanson: an Interpretation of Manuscript

Accidentals(Cambridge, 1997)

B. Haggh : ‘Guillaume Du Fay’s Birthplace: Some Notes on a Hypothesis’, RBM, li (1997), 17–21

L. Holford-Strevens : ‘Du Fay the Poet? Problems in the Texts of the Motets’, EMH, xvi (1997), 97–165

A.E. Planchart : ‘Music for the Papal Chapel in the Early Fifteenth Century’, Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval

and Renaissance Rome, ed. R. Sherr (Oxford, 1998), 93–124

A.E. Planchart : ‘Concerning Du Fay’s Birthplace’, RBM, liv (2000), 225–9; reply by B. Haggh, 229–30

P. Gülke : Guillaume Du Fay: Musik des 15. Jahrhunderts (Kassel, 2003), 93–124

Alejandro Enrique Planchart