The Classical Music Book

42

See also: Micrologus 24–25 ■ Magnus liber organi 28–31 ■ Missa Pange

lingua 43 ■ Canticum Canticorum 46–51 ■ St. Matthew Passion 98–105

F

rom Franco-Flemish

composer Guillaume Dufay

onward, the harmonic

language of music begins to sound

more familiar to modern listeners.

Earlier composers had followed the

harmonic ideals worked out by the

ancient Greek philosopher and

mathematician Pythagoras, based

on the “perfect” consonance of

octaves and fourth and fifth

intervals. Dufay’s innovation was

to use chords featuring the third

interval in the scale as a harmony

note (mi in the sol-fa singing scale,

following do and re). Historically,

the harmony of third intervals had

been seen as somewhat dissonant,

to be used sparingly.

Secular sounds in church

Dufay’s masses made much use of

the cantus firmus technique, which

built a piece around an already

existing melody, such as a well-

known sacred composition or a

plainchant. In L’homme armé,

Dufay chose a popular French folk

song with a distinctive melody that

lent itself well to a polyphonic

layering of voices. Following the

lead of English musicians, who had

already embraced the use of third

intervals, Dufay allows the music

to dwell on the interval’s sweet,

less hollow sound. This extended

the harmonic vocabulary and

created room for more voices. ■

NOT A SINGLE PIECE OF

MUSIC COMPOSED BEFORE

THE LAST 40 YEARS ...

IS WORTH HEARING

MISSA L’HOMME ARMÉ (c.1460),

GUILLAUME DUFAY

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

New harmonies

BEFORE

1430 Englishman Leonel

Power composes Alma

redemptoris mater, possibly

the first Mass to use an

identified cantus firmus—a

“set song”—as the basis for

its melodic framework.

1430 Rex seculorum is written

as a cantus firmus Mass in the

English style, either by John

Dunstable or Leonel Power.

AFTER

1570 Italian Giovanni

Palestrina publishes a five-

voice setting of the Mass on

the L’homme armé melo dy.

1999 Welsh composer Karl

Jenkins incorporates the

L’homme armé folk song into

the first and final movements

of his Mass The Armed Man.

Master of melody Guillaume Dufay

stands beside a portable organ in an

illumination from the 15th-century

poetic work, Le champion des dames.

US_042-043_Guillaume_Dufay.indd 42 26/03/18 1:00 PM