Guillaume Du Fay
Guillaume Du Fay was a composer and music theorist of early Renaissance music, who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish. Considered the leading European composer of his time, his music was widely performed and reproduced. Du Fay was well-associated with composers of the Burgundian School, particularly his colleague Gilles Binchois, but was never a regular member of the Burgundian chapel himself.
While he is among the best-documented composers of his time, Du Fay's birth and family are shrouded with uncertainty, though he was probably the illegitimate child of a priest. He was educated at Cambrai Cathedral, where his teachers included Nicolas Grenon and Richard Loqueville. For the next decade, Du Fay worked throughout Europe: as a subdeacon in Cambrai, under Carlo I Malatesta in Rimini, for the House of Malatesta in Pesaro, and under Louis Aleman in Bologna, where he was ordained priest. As his fame began to spread, he settled in Rome in 1428 as musician of the prestigious papal choir, first under Pope Martin V and then Pope Eugene IV, where he wrote the motets Balsamus et munda cera, Ecclesie militantis and Supremum est mortalibus. Amid Rome's financial and political disorder in the 1430s, Du Fay took a leave of absence from the choir to serve Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy.
Du Fay returned to Italy in 1436, writing his most admired work, the complex motet Nuper Rosarum Flores, which celebrated the consecration of Filippo Brunelleschi's dome for the Florence Cathedral. He later joined the recently moved papal court in Bologna, and was associated with the House of Este in Ferrara. For the next eleven years, Du Fay was in Cambrai serving Philip the Good, under whom he may have written now-lost works on music theory. After a brief return to both Savoy and Italy, Du Fay settled in Cambrai in 1458, where his focus shifted from song and motet, to composing English-inspired cyclic masses based on cantus firmus, such as the Missa Ave regina celorum, the Missa Ecce ancilla Domini, the Missa L'Homme armé and the Missa Se la face ay pale. During his final years in Cambrai, Du Fay wrote his now-lost requiem and both met and influenced the leading musicians of his time, including Antoine Busnois, Loyset Compère, Johannes Tinctoris and particularly, Johannes Ockeghem.
Du Fay has been described as leading the first generation of European musicians who were primarily considered 'composers' by occupation. His erratic career took him throughout Western Europe, resulting in a 'cosmopolitan style' and an extensive oeuvre which included representatives of virtually every polyphonic genre of his time. Like Binchois, Du Fay was deeply influenced by the contenance angloise style of John Dunstaple, and synthesized it with a wide variety of other styles, including that of the famous Missa Caput, and the techniques of his younger contemporaries, Ockeghem and Busnois.
Life
Background
Du Fay's life is better documented than "almost any other composer of the 15th century". The reasons for this are numerous, but especially informative are the thorough record keeping of the institutions he associated with and the many biographical or historical anecdotes integrated in his compositions. In addition, while records from many northern French cathedrals were either lost or destroyed, those from Cambrai Cathedral remain extant.Modern scholarship generally spells the composer's surname as two words, 'Du Fay'. Before the late 20th century, however, spelling the name as single word—'Dufay'—was much more common. Archival discoveries from this period revealed that the surname was usually spelled as two words in documents of the 14th and 15th century, contrary to musical sources of that time. It seems that Du Fay's parents spelt their surname as 'Du Fayt', but for unknown reasons the composer altered the spelling while active in Italy. Documents from the composer's early years in Cambrai sometimes spelled his first name as Willaume, or a related form such as Willermus, Willem or Wilhelm.
Early life
From the evidence of his will, he was probably born in Beersel, in the vicinity of Brussels, the illegitimate child of an unknown priest and a woman named Marie Du Fayt. She moved with her son to Cambrai early in his life, staying with a relative who was a canon of the cathedral there. The link between the Du Fay family and the Cathedral of Cambrai is the sole reason a large amount of information is known about Du Fay's early life, as the institute kept detailed records on all affiliated persons. His musical gifts were noticed by the cathedral authorities, who evidently gave him a thorough training in music; he studied with Rogier de Hesdin during the summer of 1409, and he was listed as a choirboy in the cathedral from 1409 to 1412. During those years he studied with Nicolas Malin, and the authorities must have been impressed with the boy's gifts because they gave him his own copy of Villedieu's Doctrinale Puerorum in 1411, a highly unusual event for one so young. In June 1414, aged around 16, he had already been given a benefice as chaplain at St. Géry, immediately adjacent to Cambrai where he studied under Nicolas Malin and Richard Loqueville. Later that year, on the evidence of music composed, and a later relationship with the Malatesta court, members of which he met on the trip, he probably went to the Council of Konstanz. He likely stayed there until 1418, at which time he returned to Cambrai.Cambrai to Italy and Savoy
From November 1418 to 1420 he was a subdeacon at Cambrai Cathedral. In 1420 he left Cambrai for Italy – first to Rimini and then to Pesaro, where he worked for the Malatesta family. Several of his compositions can be dated to this period; they contain colloquial references to Italy. There he met the composers Hugo and Arnold de Lantins, who were also among the musicians of the Malatesta household. In 1424 Du Fay returned to Cambrai, because of the illness and subsequent death of the relative with whom his mother was staying. By 1426, however, he had returned to Italy. In Bologna, he entered the service of Cardinal Louis Aleman, the papal legate. While in Bologna he became a deacon, and by 1428 he was ordained priest.Cardinal Aleman was driven from Bologna by the rival Canedoli family in 1428, and Du Fay also left, going to Rome. He became a member of the Papal Choir, the most prestigious musical establishment in Europe, serving first Pope Martin V, and then after the death of Pope Martin in 1431, Pope Eugene IV. By this time his fame had spread, and he had become one of the most respected musicians in Europe. As a consequence, honors in the form of benefices came to him from churches in his homeland. In 1434 he was appointed maistre de chappelle in Savoy, where he served Duke Amédée VIII. He had left Rome because of a crisis in the finances of the papal choir while seeking to escape the turbulence and uncertainty during the struggle between the papacy and the Council of Basel. By 1435 he was again in the service of the papal chapel, but this time it was in Florence – Pope Eugene having been driven from Rome in 1434 by the establishment of an insurrectionary republic there, sympathetic to the Council of Basel and the Conciliar movement. In 1436 Du Fay composed the festive motet Nuper rosarum flores, one of his most famous compositions, dedicated to and performed at the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, featuring Filippo Brunelleschi's renowned dome. Eugene at this time lived in exile at the nearby church of Santa Maria Novella.
The papal court moved to Bologna in April 1436, and by 10 May 1437 Du Fay was in possession of a university law degree. Since there is no evidence that Du Fay had studied law at Bologna, it is likely that the degree was granted by papal fiat. In September 1436, Du Fay achieved what he had long sought for, a lucrative benefice near the place of his birth. A certain Jehan Vivien went on to become the bishop of Nevers, vacating his canonicate at Cambrai in the process, and Du Fay was given Vivien's canonicate by both motu proprio and Papal bull. Although the law degree was not necessary in holding the canonicate at Cambrai, Du Fay regarded both titles important enough to be mentioned in his funeral monument.
During this period Du Fay also began his long association with the Este family in Ferrara, some of the most important musical patrons of the Renaissance, and with which he probably had become acquainted during the days of his association with the Malatesta family; Rimini and Ferrara are not only geographically close, but the two families were related by marriage, and Du Fay composed at least one ballade for Niccolò III, Marquis of Ferrara. In 1437 Du Fay visited the town. When Niccolò died in 1441, the next Marquis maintained the contact with Du Fay, and not only continued financial support for the composer but copied and distributed some of his music.
Return to Cambrai
The struggle between the papacy and the Council of Basel continued through the 1430s, and evidently Du Fay realised that his own position might be threatened by the spreading conflict, especially since Pope Eugene was deposed in 1439 by the council and replaced by Duke Amédée of Savoy himself, as Pope Felix V. At this time Du Fay returned to his homeland, arriving in Cambrai by December of that year. One of the first documents mentioning him in Cambrai is dated 27 December 1440, when he received a delivery of 36 lots of wine for the feast of St. John the Evangelist.Du Fay was to remain in Cambrai through the 1440s, and during this time he was also in the service of the Duke of Burgundy. While in Cambrai he collaborated with Nicolas Grenon on a complete revision of the liturgical musical collection of the cathedral, which included writing an extensive collection of polyphonic music for services. In addition to his musical work, he was active in the general administration of the cathedral. In 1444 his mother Marie died, and was buried in the cathedral; and in 1445 Du Fay moved into the house of the previous canon, which was to remain his primary residence for the rest of his life. Planchart speculates that around this time Du Fay might have written his works on music theory, both of which are lost.