Lament for Constantinople & other songs - The Orlando Consort - Guillaume Dufay (c1400-1474)

Following its Linn debut which saw the ‘revitalization of an iconic group’ (Choir & Organ), Gothic Voices presents The Dufay Spectacle, featuring special guest Andrew Lawrence-King. In a pageant of versatility featuring France’s greatest pre-Renaissance composer we enter the world of a grand New Year’s Day wedding feast, full of optimism and vision, tempered by playful emotional hardship, the music teasingly exploring the relationship between both, solemnized with some of Guillaume Dufay’s greatest motets and a festive use of instruments to mark the splendor of the occasion. From this final flourish of the mediaeval era we hear in Dufay’s quintessential Burgundian virtuosity how its musical richness has reached the point when it is about to burst into the new artistry and ideas of the Renaissance. The Dufay Spectacle celebrates this artist’s genius with an eclectic show of frolicking and passionate robustness, plaintive devotional ardor, with slow, dark rhythms, upbeat cascades of melody, and thrilling complex rhythms. As the central chanson rings out its New Year’s promise ce jour de l’an is indeed a day to celebrate.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Choral Music (Sacred) - PALESTRINA, G.P. da / JOSQUIN DES PR

Like many of his contemporaries, Guillaume Dufay was greatly devoted to the Virgin Mary. His Marian works comprise liturgical pieces sung during the Mass or the Office, but also religious motets written to new poems. It was probably during his first period in the chapel of the dukes of Savoy that Dufay produced a complete cycle of polyphonic hymns for the Office of Vespers of the principal feasts. Their interpretation obeys the principle of alternatim chant, that is to say alternation between monophonic odd-numbered verses, sung in plainchant, and even-numbered polyphonic verses. Dufay employs here the techniques of composition already in use in the fourteenth century. The liturgical melody is sung in the highest voice but appears transformed according to the principles of paraphrase: the composer's inventive contribution, in this context, resides in the flexibility of the mensuration (often ternary) and the grace of his ornamentation. The other two, lower voices accompany it in a virtually homophonic style. The influence of the improvisatory practice known as 'fauxbourdon' is manifest. In it's simple form, the melody of the cantus is doubled by the tenor and the contratenor, respectively a sixth and a fourth lower. The result is a succession of highly characteristic chords, interrupted only for the cadences.

DUFAY / COMPERE / ARNOLD DE LANTINS: Songs and Dances from t

Following its Gramophone Editor’s Choice album Echoes of an Old Hall, Medieval expert Gothic Voices has recorded The Splendour of Florence, a collection of Franco-Flemish music that was found in or associated with Florence. Occupying pride of place, Dufay’s motet Nuper rosarum flores is widely thought to reflect the proportions of the newly completed dome of Florence cathedral, for which it was written at the cathedral’s consecration in 1436. The other works – by Franco-Flemish composers Ockeghem, Busnois, Tinctoris, van Ghizeghem and others – are taken from a couple of Florentine chansonniers, which in turn document the wide dissemination of their music in the thriving Tuscan city. This album thus showcases Florence in all its splendour and lavishness, a city that proved a creative magnet for the highly-skilled and inventive compositional work of the outstanding composers of the Burgundian tradition.

This release paints a musical portrait of the young Guillaume Dufay and of the musical world he encountered when he traveled to Italy as a young man. Accordingly, it avoids the famous Dufay pieces such as the Missa Se la face ay pale, the Missa L'homme armé, or the motet Nuper rosarum flores; what you hear here is Dufay's style, which in many respects became the international style for much of the Renaissance era, coming together. The multinational group La Reverdie suggests that one aspect of this style, a freely melodic counterpoint, came from Italian sources, and crucially from the rise of Italian humanism, rather than from the Flemish and British styles usually emphasized in connection with Dufay. The album introduces several composers almost unknown to general listeners: Prepositus Brixiensis, Bartholomeus de Bononia, Bertrandus Ferraguti, and Antonius da Civitate. These composers are from an almost unknown generation following that of the first Flemish-Italian transplant, Johannes Ciconia. The disc is perhaps aimed at specialists, with the notes referring to white and black mensural notation and containing such sentences as this: "The syllable FA is interpreted as a sign of solmisation in soft hexachordum, which signifies B flat in modern terms." (The "soft hexachord" in medieval singing corresponded to the notes F-G-A-B flat-C-D.) But even for general listeners this disc marks a step forward in performing Dufay, who is difficult to put across to modern audiences. What did the dizzying complexity of the isorhythmic motet sound like to the popes who paid big money to bring Dufay across the Alps? What did the simpler music of Italy, beginning to enter into a new and radically organic connection to the text, sound like to Dufay? The spare (the music is accompanied by a small string group), rather ecstatic performances of this young ensemble help the listener to begin grappling with these questions. Notes are in French, Italian, German, and English; so are all work texts, although they are not given in parallel.

-- James Manheim, All Music Guide

A Franco-Flemish composer and music theorist of the early Renaissance, Dufay was the central figure in the Burgundian School and was the most famous and influential composer in Europe in the mid-15th century. His music was copied, distributed and sung across Europe and almost all composers of the succeeding generations absorbed some elements of his style. The Hilliard Ensemble is one of the world's finest vocal chamber groups, and is probably unrivalled for its formidable reputation in the fields of both early and new music. Its distinctive style and highly developed musicianship engage the listener as much in Medieval and Renaissance repertoire as in works specially written for the group by living composers. 'Guillaume Dufay' is the final disc in the Hilliard 'Live' series to be released on CORO. The first disc - Pérotin and the Ars Antiqua - won a Diapason d'Or. '...eloquence of worshipful music, winding through some amazing counterpoint.' - The Times 'Supremely musical and overflowing with food for thought.' - The Guardian

Crammed onto one new disc from Cantica Symphonia on Glossa are two of Guillaume Dufay’s most important polyphonic works brought alongside each other for the first time on CD: the Missa Se la face ay pale and the Missa L’Homme armé. The two masses were amongst the first in history to use popular songs for their cantus firmus: Dufay’s own chanson for the first mass and the anonymous popular tune – “The Armed Man” – for the second.

The year 1453 was an extraordinary one in Western Christendom with the Fall of Constantinople following on the acquisition by Louis, Duke of Savoy of what is now known as the Shroud of Turin. As renowned scholar Anne Walters Robertson describes in her incisive scene-setting analysis for the booklet, these two events provided the backdrop for Dufay – newly recalled by the Duke to the Court of Savoy – to compose these remarkable commemorative masses.

As is the case with its general interpretative outlook, Cantica Symphonia opt for performances which embrace the use of instruments such as slide trumpets, sackbuts, fiddles and the organ alongside vocal forces. Director Giuseppe Maletto and organist Guido Magnano discuss their reasons for such instrumental involvement in the CD booklet. This is the fourth recording of music by Guillaume Dufay – to add to two volumes devoted to motets and one to chansons – from Cantica Symphonia on the Glossa label, and it resumes the Italian ensemble’s remarkable coverage of 15th-century treasures. - Glossa

Although the music of Dufay is no stranger to CD--groups such as Pomerium, the Binchois Consort, Gothic Voices, and Orlando Consort all have devoted discs to his masses and motets--this offering by The Clerk's Group, featuring selections from an important Italian manuscript known as Bologna Q15, provides a fascinating overview of both early and later works from this illustrious 15th century French composer. The hour-long program focuses on motets and mass movements that reveal a progression in Dufay's compositional style, from the rather square motet Vasilissa, ergo gaude (the composer's "earliest datable work") to the complex rhythms and free ornamentation of O gemma, lux et speculum and the sophisticated structure and highly developed melodic/harmonic relationships of the Credo (manuscript No. 108).

If you're an early music fan, you'll be right at home with this mostly male ensemble's finely focused, reedy sound (there's one woman among the group's six members, veteran alto Lucy Ballard), and there's no letting down of energy or concentration throughout the longest phrases within individual motets or across the more extended mass movements. The closely recorded voices and overall bright sonic quality wears a bit after 15 or 20 minutes, but you can't fault the singing, which brings a vibrant, assured presence to these ancient works; and if you're looking for fine, clearly sung, stylistically conscientious performances, you really can't go wrong here.

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

DUFAY: Missa L' homme arme