Search - Guillaume Dufay, Andrew Kirkman :: Dufay: Music for St. James the Greater

Dufay would be proud

Eddie Konczal | 02/02/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Guillaume Dufay (c. 1397-1474) was arguably the dominant composer of the 15th century, and a crucial figure in music history. Dufay successfully blended the two major musical developments of the early 15th century - the imperfect consonances (3rds and 6ths) popularized by English composers such as Dunstable, and the rhythmic advances of Continental composers such as Ciconia - thus forging a new style that would become the foundation of Renaissance music. Dufay mastered both sacred and secular forms, and directly influenced younger contemporaries such as Ockeghem and Busnoys. Many musicologists credit later composers, such as Josquin or Obrecht, with developing the "learned style" of pervasive imitation that dominated Renaissance polyphony. However, the elements of the learned style had their genesis - however elementary - in the music of Dufay.



"The Mass for St. James the Greater" is an early Dufay plenary Mass (c. 1427), which includes not only the movements of the Mass Ordinary (Gloria, Kyrie, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) but also the Proper movements (Introit, Alleluia, Offertory and Communio). Scholars have identified the Communio as the first documented use of "fauxbourdon" - a quasi-improvisatory technique that supported the highest voice with parallel first inversion chords, emulating the "sweet sound" of the English composers. The Mass is not top-shelf Dufay, but instead captures the composer in a formative, developmental phase. Dufay would go on to master the Cyclic Mass with works such as "Missa Se la face ay pale" and "Missa L'homme arme," and thereby establish the standards to which composers of 15th century sacred music aspired.



The Binchois Consort, led by Andrew Kirkman, performs not only the entire Mass for St. James the Greater, but associated motets ("Rite majorem Jacobum" and "Apostolo Glorioso") from approximately the same period. The motets showcase Dufay's skill with shorter sacred forms, a genre that Dufay would eventually master with "Nuper rosarum flores" (1436).



Some may criticize the composition of the Binchois Consort (eight male adults), but Dufay did not always have large vocal ensembles to compose for, especially early in his career. Male sopranos can be an acquired taste, but the Binchois Consort delivers tasteful, impeccable performances. The acoustics are astounding and the production values are pristine. Dufay would be proud that his early works have received such sensitive handling, nearly six centuries after their composition."

Music for the Pilgrims to Compostela...

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 10/02/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"... the modern ones, that is. Those of Dufay's era, the poor sods, had to trudge all the way from their homes in France or Burgundy to the outer edge of Europe in Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, without iPods! Don't make the same mistake, ye recreational pilgrims of today! Load this CD and several of Sequentia's recordings of music from the Codex Calixtinus; start from Le Puy and be sure to take the route through Conques. Plan to hike with maximum leisure across France, eating your way from Romanesque shrine to shrine. Then get a bicycle to finish your pilgrimage across central northern Spain, where the trails are not very scenic and awfully close to the highway.



Santiago, Saint Jacques, Saint James! The patron of Spain and of the Reconquest of Christian lands in southern Europe from the Moors. Until you visit the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, you really can't imagine the iconic power of Saint James for catholics of the Middle Ages. There you'll see the Saint himself on horseback - sculpted, painted, embossed in pure gold - trampling Moors under his hoofs. You might as well also stop and enjoy some of the best seafood you'll ever eat in one of the hundreds of restaurants in Compostela. That too is a historical tribute, since the whole inn-keeping business got its impetus from the pilgrimage route.



This mass by Guillaume Dufay, perhaps composed as a coherent whole and perhaps not, will go quite a ways toward putting you in the mood for reverence, both for the great religious art of the late Middle Ages and for Dufay as one of the most sublime composers of any era. If the movements of the mass and the motets performed here are early works of Dufay, then he was already masterful, both in musical structure and in expressiveness. The nine tracks on this CD assembled as the Mass for Saint James convey a serenity of spirit that few later, more exuberant and florid examples of polyphony seldom would equal. But then the performance delivers a bonus, quite a different kind of music from the same quill: the intricate polytextual intellectaulism of Rite Majorem Jacobum/Arcibus Summus; the sweet chanson-like cheer of Balsamus; and the exalting rhythmic brightness of the separate Gloria and Credo, and the motet Apostolo Glorioso, composed for the rededication of a church in Patras, Greece! Truly, the pilgrim-infested roads of Dufay's Europe were amazing channels of musical culture.



The Binchois Consort is worthy of the composer. That's the highest compliment I cpuld pay any vocal ensemble. Singing most of their selections with two on a part, they manage to have the precision of articulation of any equally fine one-on-a-part ensemble. Two on a part is a format well documented for the churches at which Dufay was active for most of his career. Larger choirs can't possibly do justice to polyphony like Dufay's, in which each of the three or four lines has to express its own phraseology, its own textual rhetoric, with great independence, coming to dramatic unity at cadence points. The producers of this CD have also understood the requirements of polyphony, and have recorded these voices with nearly perfect clarity and transparency.



There are two other CDs available of Dufay's music performed by the Binchois Consort - The Mass for Saint Anthony, and the Mass Puisque Je Vis - and two artful recordings by the ensemble 'Diabolus in Musica,' which I have reviewed. A French vocal consort also uses the name of Dufay's great contemporary: Ensemble Gilles Binchois. Their recording of Dufay's Missa Ecce Ancilla Domine is quite musical. That's six - count 'em, SIX - superb CDs! Enough music to grace your trek from Conques, the jewel of Romanesque architecture, to Cahors, the capital of cassoulet!"