Guillaume DUFAY. Chansons
Tetraktys

medieval.org
Olive Music om 005
2005

1. Bonjour, bon mois (rondeau)  [4:08]
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Can. Misc. 213
Guillermus dufay
Further sources in München and Paris

2. Las, que feray? (rondeau)  [5:27]
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Can. Misc. 213
Guillermus dufay
Further sources in Escorial and Straßburg (lost)

3. J'ai mis mon cuer (ballade)  [2:04]
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Can. Misc. 213
Guillermus dufay
Further source in Venice
Akrostichon: JSABETE

4. Mon cuer me fait (rondeau)  [5:08]
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Can. Misc. 213
Guillermus dufay conposuit
Akrostichon: MARJA ANDREASQ[ue]

5. Hélas mon deuil (virelai)  [5:34]
Oporto, Biblioteca Pública, Municipal, Ms. 714
Dufai

6. La belle se siet (ballade)  [1:13]
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Can. Misc. 213
G. du fay
Further sources in Bologna, Paris and Namur

7. Quel fronte signorille (rondeau)  [3:28]
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Can. Misc. 213
Guillermus dufay
Rome conposuit

8. Helas, ma dame (rondeau, instr.)  [3:41]
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Can. Misc. 213
(text incomplete)
G. dufay conposuit

9. Je languis en piteulx martire (ballade)  [7:59]
Trento, Museo provinciale d'Arte, Ms. 1379
Dufay

10. Ce jour de l'an (rondeau)  [2:24]
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Can. Misc. 213
Guillermus dufay

11. Dona i ardenti rai (rondeau)  [2:33]
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Can. Misc. 213
Guillermus dufay

12. Adieu ces bon vins de Lannoys (rondeau)  [4:21]
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Can. Misc. 213
G. dufay 1426

13. C'est bien raison (ballade)  [10:55]
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Can. Misc. 213
Guillermus dufay

TETRAKTYS

Jill Feldman, soprano
Kees Boeke, vielle, flustes
Maria Christina Cleary, harpe
Jane Achtman, vielle





Viellas/fiddles: Fabio Galgani, Massa Marittima, Italy
Flutes: Luca de Paolis, l'Aquila, Italy
Harp: Winfried Görge, Berlin

Diapason: a'=523 Hz
Temperament: pythagorean


Recorded: 2-4 May 2004
at the Pieve di San Giovanni Battista a Petrolo Galatrona, Arezzo, Italy

Production:
Kees Boeke | Mario Martinoli

Recording engineer: Matteo Costa
Pre-editing: Kees Boeke
Digital editing: Matteo Costa
Liner notes: Laurens Lütteken

Design and lay-out: Artwize Amsterdam

cover illustration:
Paolo Uccello (1397-1475)
Portrait of a young man ca. 1450
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chambéry
&
Portrait of a Lady
(supposedly Elisabetta di Montefeltro, wife of Roberto Malatesta) ca. 1450
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ⓟ Olive Music 2005
© Kees Boeke & Olive Music 2005

COMPOSING BETWEEN STANDARDIZATION AND INDIVIDUALIZATION

Guillaume Dufay's Chansons

Guillaume Dufay, the radiant and widely travelled musical authority of his century, occupied himself during his lifetime not only intensively with religious music but also with secular composition, and this quite independently from his respective positions of employment. Moreover, in the secular repertoire, he was confronted from the start with conditions that fundamentally did not change until his death, and that therefore differ characteristically from the two other main genres that were substantially modified and developed by him: the motet and the newly emerging cyclic mass ordinary. The secular music of the 15th century was the only field in polyphonic compositional praxis that possessed clear formal structures. Whereas mass and motet differed in that new compositional relationships had to be constituted from work to work, secular music showed a clear structure, based on the repetition of sections. These structures, however, were not independent but were derived from the patterns given by the underlying organization of the strophic text. Still, for the first time in polyphonic music, this provided a model that permitted a differentiated intrinsically musical form.

The first examples stem from the first decades of the 14th century, when the lyrical genres found their relatively precise definitions that became the patterns for the music. These polyphonic (as a rule 3-part) musical settings had to exactly mirror the formal construction of the poetry, and were for this reason called “formes fixes”. Essentially, we distinguish three strophic forms of varying degrees of complexity: Rondeau, Ballade and Virelai or Bergerette. As a rule, the principle is that, apart from a refrain, single verses with identical text and music, or respectively, verses with different text but identical music are performed.The disposition and succession of these verses together with the(ir) metre then yield the respective genre.

However, the far-reaching standardization of the “formes fixes” did not only concern the outer structure. Basically, since the 14th century there were further prerequisites connected to them that, at least during Dufay's lifetime, did in principle not change and were valid throughout Europe. For one, the text was in the French language, which was not only obligatory in Burgundy, France and Savoy, but equally in the area of what is today's southern Germany, and Switzerland, as well as at the courts and “signorie” in northern and central Italy, with the inclusion of the papal state. Italian, German, Spanish and Flemish texts always constituted an exception and only developed a truly autonomous and continuous tradition from 1500 onwards. On the other hand, and this was the second important prerequisite, secular music produced a type of composition that is emphatically distinct from the motet or the mass, and at first glance seems much more “modern”. It is called “cantilena” or treble-dominated style that as a rule consists of a sung upper part with two untexted, and therefore probably instrumental, lower parts, in the way as it has been realised in this recording. The mass or motet, on the contrary, is made up of a texture of, as a rule, four equally important voices with a cantus firmus in the tenor part. The multiple texting of voices (like in Dufay's Ce jour de l'an) or four-part writing (as in Mon cuer me fait) remained an exception. These prerequisites were binding until the end of the 15th century. Only then were the “formes fixes” replaced by free forms, because their plain structure was no longer perceived as a quality but rather as an impediment: on one side the unrestrained French chansons, on the other that multitude of Italian text-declamatory forms that would eventually merge into the madrigal.

As distinct from the compositions of his slightly younger contemporaries, Dufay's chansons were written down in manuscripts that normally also contained liturgical repertoire and motets. Moreover, the transmission of his works, although in numbers for which there is no parallel in the 15th century, is altogether problematic. This is because, apart from one possible exception, not a single one of these manuscripts originates from the immediate vicinity of the composer. Almost all of them were produced before 1450, mostly in northern Italy, and were not intended for performance. The most famous of these (which is also the most important for the pieces on this recording, and at present is in the Bodleian library in Oxford) was compiled in 1436, and probably comes from Venice, although our composer never held a position there. This signifies, in terms of Dufay's Chansons, an aggravating deficit: no direct sources remain from any of the many locations of activity of the composer. Most of his works are only vaguely datable, and from the second half of his life no chansons whatsoever survive, although it is a known fact that he composed secular works also during his permanence in Cambrai. The manuscripts that were compiled there were destroyed at the latest during the iconoclasms of the French revolution, when the cathedral itself also was razed.

Under these circumstances, it is all the more astonishing that so many of Dufay's chansons have actually survived, although they irrevocably only allow insight into the creativity of the young and middle-period composer. At least, in the preserved works, we rarely meet with uncertainties as regards authorship and philological consistency. In addition, there is a clear hierarchical preference: foremost are the French works, with the number of remaining Rondeaux (around 60) six times that of the Ballades (around 10), and the slightly old-fashioned Virelai (4) hardly playing a role anymore. The few Italian songs (8), on the other hand, have a particular status as they form an isolated group of intricately constructed pieces in a predominantly anonymous and unpretentious repertoire of Italian compositions before 1470. The 14 works chosen for this recording — about one sixth of all the chansons by Dufay that have been preserved — reflect this hierarchy in a nutshell: nine Rondeaux (of which two with Italian text), four Ballades and one Virelai.

It is in Dufay's songs that, for the first time in the realm of secular music, we may discern a reflected treatment of the fixed norms of the genre, and in this they distinguish themselves completely from the productions of his contemporaries. On the one hand, all songs, with few exceptions, respect the canon of courtly love, i.e. maintain the laws of the “formes fixes”, without significant variations. At the same time, however, they achieve a maximum in compositional procedures within these boundaries, and as such they assume the status of far-reaching exploration of the “formes fixes” themselves, as it were, on a meta-level of the compositional discourse. In this sense, the compositional individualization does not signify a breaking with the standard rules, but is rather accomplished by an extremely differentiated procedure of reflection and commenting that takes on a new form from work to work. Thus they mark the beginning of a new era in music in two ways: on the one hand, they refer to the normative consolidation of the relationships between genres, and those relationships we encounter actually for the first time only in the 15th century. On the other hand, each single work acquires, at best, the status of a productive, individual and therefore unique argumentation of these norms.

The techniques that Dufay uses to this end know hardly any limits in their multiplicity and abundant fantasy. Already in a Rondeau like Adieu ces bons vins this becomes manifest, especially since this is on the surface a rather conventional piece. lt is in 3 parts, in “Cantilena” style. lt has an instrumental introduction and an instrumental epilogue, the piece comes tonally full circle, and the single verses of the text are clearly separated. In the manuscript, the work is even, exceptionally, dated. lt is 1426, and we hear about the singer's probably only fictitious farewell to Laon, since there is no proof that the composer was actually ever there. Consequently the piece belongs more likely at the court of the Malatesta. In the inner structure of this “standard” song, though, the composer shows his abilities in musical differentiation, for example in the four different and most significant settings of the word “Adieu”. Or, in the refined dovetailing of the three voices, and the declamatory rendering in descending melodic lines at the end of the second, respectively of the last verse.

All these courtly chansons were written on commission. In some of them the name of the patron is hidden in an acrostic (the first letters of each text line put together), as in Mon ruer me fait, an homage to a certain Maria and a certain Andreas whose identity up until now could not be successfully established. In C'est bien rayson, dated 1433 and written in praise of Niccolò III d'Este of Ferrara, the name of the prince is even emphatically mentioned at the very end of the piece and appropriately presented. The delight of the public at court however was perhaps less ignited by searching for such hidden or representative homages than by perceiving the finesse in the compositional inner structure. These differ from work to work, and in them the composer shows what he is worth. In J'ay mis mon ruer, Dufay experiments with suggestive, declamatory text portrayal and at the same time presents patroness Elisabetta Malatesta da Rimini (JSABETE) in an acrostic. In Je languis, a widely expanded Ballade, the composer tries the opposite: relatively little text in soaring melodic lines. In the witty New Years song Bon jour, bon mois, both outer parts form a canon that constantly is broken up, and in La belle se siet the dialogue in the text becomes the starting point for a highly virtuosic exchange between the voices. Finally, in the two Italian pieces, and especially in Quel fronte signorille (probably written at the papal court), the composer exploits both texted outer voices for a compact rendering of the words, without falling into rhetorical or declamatory style.

In all this there is one thing that plays only a minor role, an aspect that would excite the main interest of composers after Dufay's death: the emotional musical interpretation of single words in the text. We see this    aspect in Dufay only as an exception, which however at the same time can be considered one of the most spectacular of the entire 15th century: In the Rondeau Hélas mon deuil, of which the text remains incomplete, the composer endeavours an expressive text interpretation exemplified by a refined chromatic texture, bold tonal treatment (beginning and end differ in tonality), a breaking down of the hierarchy between the voices and the inclusion of change of mensuration in the process. Thus in a way, he spreads wide out all compositional parameters that are not normally at his disposal, in order to try to make the listener participate in the “complainte” with the help of music, to move and overwhelm him with song.

Nevertheless, also Hélas mon deuil is merely embedded in a colourful spectrum of compositional procedures of which around 1450 it was not yet clear, which one would eventually succeed and which one would not. Thus the rules of the “formes fixes” become here a framework for individual musical experiments that do not question coherent relationships but present them to make them the object of observation and contemplation. In this manner, and this is unique in the context of the 15th century, Dufay's works emphatically establish the consistency of the genre, and at the same time put it in question. Probably for the last time, they obey, in the structural treatment of the text, modes of thought that still belong to the middle ages. On the other hand, and probably for the first time in music history, they reveal, in the conscious and critical consideration of the norms of the genre, something like a productive historical thinking in terms of musical composition. Therefore Dufay's chansons stand at the beginning of a new, epochal context, definable as “change” or “modem times”, last but not least from the point of view of the composer himself.

Laurenz Lütteken
translation: Kees Boeke, Robert Claire

GUILLAUME DUFAY

Just before 1400
Born, perhaps in Cambrai, as the son of Marie Dufay, father unknown.

1409-14
Puer altaris, afterwards clericus at Cambrai cathedral.

1414-17
In the entourage of cardinal Pierre d'Ailly during the Council of Constance.

1418
Ordination to sub deacon at Cambrai.

1419-26
Singer in the court chapel of the Malatesta family in Rimini and Pesaro.

1425/26
Travel to the Peloponnesos, and to Patras.

1426-28
In the service of Cardinal Louis Aleman in Bologna.

1428
Ordination to priest.

1428-1437
Singer in the chapels of Pope Martin V. and Pope Eugene IV, from c.1431 as maestro di capella, first in Rome, later (1436/37) in Florence.

1433-35
Maestro di capella at the court of Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy in Chambéry.

1436
Nomination as canon at the Cathedral of Cambrai (already1431 prebends in Tournai, Lausanne and Bruges, 1433 in Cossonay,1434 in Geneva).

1437
Legal studies, probably at the university of the Curia.

1438-39
Representative of the Chapter of the cathedral of Cambrai during the Council of Basle.

1439-52
Canon at the Cathedral of Cambrai,
1446 also Canon at Ste.Waudru in Mons;
Travels to Bruges (1442 and 1443), to Brussels (1449) and to Italy (1450).

1452-58
Again maestro di capella at the court of Savoy in Chambéry.

1458
Definitive return to Cambrai; ordering and collecting of his works in systematically arranged manuscripts (all lost).

1460-74
Composition of the great Cantus firmus Masses, of the 'Ave regina celorum' (1464), the Requiem (1470, lost) and other liturgical, but probably also secular works, among which a comprehensive monodic Marian liturgy; extensive contact with important European courts.

27.11.1474
Dies in Cambrai.