The most celebrated musician of the fifteenth century — the Franco-Flemish master who fused the sweet new harmony of thirds and sixths with a grand architectural mind, and helped forge the cyclic cantus-firmus Mass that would shape a century of composition.
History of Early Music · No. 07 — The Burgundian Sun
Guillaume Du Fay (also spelt Dufay, c. 1397–1474) was the leading composer of the mid fifteenth century — a Franco-Flemish singer, priest and diplomat whose reputation stretched from the papal chapel in Rome to the courts of Italy and Savoy and home to the great cathedral of Cambrai. He stands on the hinge between the mediaeval and the Renaissance worlds.
At home across Europe — Cambrai, the papal chapel, Italy and the House of Savoy — carrying styles between them.
Full triadic sonority — pervasive thirds and sixths — the "sweetness" that defines the age.
A structural mind: the unified cyclic Mass and the proportioned ceremonial motet.
Rooted in Ars Nova technique, yet reaching toward the smooth, consonant Renaissance idiom.
His name is spelt "Du Fay" or "Dufay" in the sources; scholars today favour the two-word form the composer himself used.
Trained as a choirboy at Cambrai Cathedral, Du Fay spent his prime years in Italy and Savoy before returning to Cambrai in authority. Everywhere he went, his music travelled with him and was copied.
Dates are approximate where the archival record is thin; "c." marks the uncertainty.
Du Fay inherited the intricate rhythmic machinery of the fourteenth-century Ars Nova — and smoothed it. He kept its architecture but let the surface breathe with graceful melody and warm, full-sounding chords. The result feels recognisably like the dawn of the Renaissance.
The isorhythmic motet, complex mensural rhythm, the open fourths and fifths of mediaeval sonority, and the cantus-firmus idea of borrowing a pre-existing melody.
Sweet, consonant harmony built on thirds and sixths; graceful, singable top lines; and unity — binding the whole Mass into a single cyclic design.
Historians place the boundary between mediaeval and Renaissance music somewhere in Du Fay's lifetime — which is another way of saying he helped move it.
For centuries, theory had prized the open fourth and fifth as the "perfect" consonances, treating thirds and sixths as imperfect. In the early fifteenth century that reversed. The rich, sweet triadic sound — associated with the English contenance angloise — became the new ideal, and Du Fay was its great continental champion.
First the hollow parallel fifths of mediaeval sonority (pure Pythagorean tuning); then the mellow, filled-in triads that made the new style famous
The poet Martin le Franc (c. 1440) wrote that Du Fay and Binchois had taken up the "English manner" (contenance angloise) and followed the English master John Dunstaple.
Fauxbourdon ("false bass") is the technique Du Fay used to spin this sweetness effortlessly. Two voices are written down a sixth apart; a third singer improvises a middle line a perfect fourth below the top. The three voices glide downward together in a chain of 6–3 chords — the continental cousin of English faburden.
Three voices moving in parallel — the top line, a fourth below it, and a sixth below it — descending together in sweet, gliding chords
Because the middle voice simply shadows the top a fourth below, only two lines needed to be written — the third was sung by rule.
Only the top and bottom voices are notated. The middle voice is not written — the singer runs it a perfect fourth below the top line. Read the chords left to right; each is a 6–3 sonority, and they all step downward in parallel.
Only the top and bottom voices are written. Their outer interval is a sixth.
The middle singer shadows the top a perfect fourth below — never written, always understood.
Every column is the same shape (a sixth outside, a third inside), gliding downward in parallel.
In 1436 Du Fay composed the motet Nuper rosarum flores for the consecration of Florence Cathedral — the ceremony crowning Filippo Brunelleschi's stupendous dome, the largest raised since antiquity. It is a grand isorhythmic motet, ceremonial and architectural in spirit.
Scholars have long debated its proportions: an older theory tied its structural ratios to the dimensions of the dome itself; a more recent reading links them instead to the biblical Temple of Solomon. Either way, it is music conceived as built structure.
Composed for 25 March 1436, the dedication of Santa Maria del Fiore. The exact meaning of its numerical proportions remains scholarly debate, not settled fact.
Du Fay helped establish the era's central large form: the cyclic Mass. All five movements of the Ordinary are unified by threading the same borrowed melody — a cantus firmus, usually held in long notes in the tenor — through every movement. One tune becomes the backbone of the whole work.
The borrowed tune could be sacred (a chant) or secular (a popular song) — a striking idea: worldly melody sanctified as the skeleton of the Mass.
One of Du Fay's landmark cyclic Masses takes its cantus firmus from his own love-song, the chanson Se la face ay pale ("If my face is pale"). The tenor of the courtly song becomes the unifying thread of the sacred Mass — the same graceful melody you can hear standing alone below.
A graceful, lilting top line in gentle triple metre, in the spirit of Du Fay's courtly chanson — synthesised reed
Setting a Mass on a secular love-tune was no scandal but a mark of art: the melody is hidden, stretched into long tenor notes, beneath the sacred text.
The most famous cantus firmus of all was a swaggering secular tune, L'homme armé ("The armed man"). Du Fay's Missa L'homme armé is among the earliest of what became an extraordinary tradition: over the following century, composer after composer built a Mass on this same melody — dozens of settings in all.
A popular, martial song — not a chant — chosen as the sacred backbone of the Mass.
Using the same tune let composers measure themselves against one another across generations.
From Du Fay onward the tune passed through Ockeghem, Josquin and far beyond.
The "armed man" tune became a kind of shared laboratory for the cyclic Mass — Du Fay's setting stands near its beginning.
Beyond the great sacred works, Du Fay wrote a wealth of secular chansons — polished courtly songs in French, chiefly rondeaux and ballades. Typically a shapely top line (the cantus) is supported by a tenor and contratenor: tender, elegant, and built on the same sweet harmony as his church music.
The fixed courtly forms — above all the rondeau and the ballade — set poems of love and refinement.
A singing cantus over supporting lower voices; the same triadic sweetness that fills his motets and Masses.
The same tune shown as a chanson top line can equally live, stretched out, as the cantus firmus of a Mass — song and liturgy sharing one melody.
Recordings vary widely in pitch, tempo and the use of instruments, since fifteenth-century sources leave much to the performer.
The ceremonial isorhythmic motet for the consecration of Florence Cathedral and its great dome — music as architecture.
A landmark cyclic Mass built on the tenor of his own chanson — worldly song made the frame of sacred music.
An early Mass on the famous "armed man" tune, launching a tradition that ran for a century and more.
Courtly rondeaux and ballades, and the fauxbourdon technique that made the new triadic sweetness effortless.
A representative handful, not a complete list — the surviving output of Masses, motets, hymns and chansons is far larger.
Du Fay gathered the threads of the mediaeval past — isorhythm, the cantus firmus, mensural rhythm — and wove them into a new fabric of sweetness and unity. The cyclic Mass he helped forge became the great form of the Renaissance; the sonorous harmony he championed became its native language. Later masters — Ockeghem, Josquin — built on ground he cleared.
Unifying the Ordinary on one borrowed tenor became the central large form for generations of composers.
Thirds and sixths, and the fauxbourdon that spread them, set the sound of Renaissance polyphony.
Du Fay's fame across Europe made the Franco-Flemish master the model of the celebrated composer.
"They have taken on the English manner and followed Dunstaple, and thereby a wonderful pleasingness makes their music joyous and remarkable."
— Martin le Franc, Le Champion des Dames (c. 1440), on Du Fay and Binchois (paraphrase of the famous contenance angloise passage)c. 1397 – 1474 · The Burgundian sun of the fifteenth century.