technique available to a 15th-century musician: faux-
bourdon, isorhythmic writing, cantus fi rmus technique,
and imitation.
Dufay’s thirteen, possibly fourteen or fi fteen, surviv-
ing isorhythmic motets are among the latest and fi nest
examples of this longstanding compositional tradition.
In nearly all cases, they are works written for a specifi c
event or patron, or may be tied to a period in Dufay’s
career. His earliest isorhythmic motet, Vasilissa ergo
gaude, continues the tradition of Royllart’s Rex Karole
(written some forty-fi ve years earlier for Charles V).
The brilliant Ecclesie militantis, a motet written be-
tween 1431 and 1433 for Eugenius IV, is Dufay’s most
complex essay in isorhythm, in six sections, with two
tenors based on different chants and three texted upper
voices. With Supremum est mortalibus (1433) and his
later isorhythmic motets, Dufay turned toward a simpler
style, based upon English practices, with long upper-
voice duets delineating the talea structure.
The majority of Dufay’s surviving works are sacred:
perhaps thirty or more settings of the complete Mass
Ordinary, combined Ordinary and Proper, or Proper;
nearly forty additional Mass movements; and nearly fi fty
settings of hymns, Magnifi cats, and antiphons for the
Offi ce and Marian antiphons. During the 1440s, Dufay
conceived at least two large cycles of Proper settings,
a series of Masses to various martyrs for Cambrai, and
a cycle of votive Masses, probably for the Burgundian
Order of the Golden Fleece. In the Missa Se la face ay
pale and Missa L’homme armé, possibly written in the
1450s for the Savoy court, Dufay used secular tenors
as a unifying device. His latest Mass, the Missa Ave re-
gina celorum, was written in 1472 for the dedication of
Cambrai cathedral. Dufay foreshadows later practices in
Mass composition by quoting and reworking polyphonic
material from his own motet Ave regina celorum and
his Missa Ecce ancilla.
In his Offi ce music and nonliturgical Latin works,
Dufay sets the chant usually in the uppermost voice,
often paraphrased, transforming it into a fl owing melody
similar to that of his secular songs. The simplest set-
tings are his Offi ce hymns, set in fauxbourdon. Some of
Dufay’s most expressive writing appears in his settings
of Marian antiphons. His four-voice Ave regina celorum
(ca. 1464), sung at Dufay’s funeral and reworked in his
Missa Ave regina, uses the chant melody as a cantus
fi rmus and includes emotional prayers on behalf of the
composer himself.
There are over eighty surviving songs by Dufay,
composed from ca. 1420 to ca. 1465. His earliest songs
exhibit a great variety of styles, from the virtuosity
and notational complexity of Resvelliés vous (1423) to
relatively simple works, such as the rondeau J’atendray
tant. His late songs, such as Adieu m’amour or Par le
regart, products of a composer in his fi fties and sixties,
are more sedate than the vivacious songs of the 1420s
and exhibit careful attention to text expression and
formal balance.
Dufay and Binchois were acknowledged by their
contemporaries as the best song composers of their
generation, but there are striking differences between
them. Binchois’s nearly sixty songs are more or less
unified in style, while Dufay’s song style evolved
substantially over his career. As in Binchois’s songs,
Dufay’s most frequent subject is courtly love, but his
works exhibit great variety, with texts celebrating May
Day or New Year’s Day (Ce jour le doibt and others),
honoring patrons (Resvelliés vous for Carlo Malatesta),
and other subjects. Like those of Binchois, the bulk of
Dufay’s texts are in fi xed forms—rondeau, ballade, and
(in later works) bergerette—but his songs also include
settings of Latin or Italian poetry, including Petrarch’s
Vergene bella.
See also Philip the GoodFurther Reading
Dufay, Guillaume. Guillelmi Dufay: opera omnia, 6 vols. (Vol. 1
in two parts), ed. Heinrich Besseler. Rome: American Institute
of Musicology, 1951–66.
Adas, Allan, ed. Papers Read at the Dufay Quincentenary Con-
ference, Brooklyn College, December 6–7, 1974. New York:
Department of Music, School of Performing Arts, Brooklyn
College, 1976.
Fallows, David. Dufay. London: Dent, 1982.
Planchart, Alejandro Enrique. “Guillaume Du Fay’s Benefi ces
and His Relationship to the Court of Burgundy.” Early Music
History 8 (1988): 117–71.
——. “The Early Career of Guillaume Du Fay.” Journal of the
American Musicological Society 46 (1993): 341–68.
Wright, Craig. “Dufay at Cambrai: Discoveries and Revisions.”
Journal of the American Musicological Society 28 (1975):
175–229.
J. Michael AllsenDUNBAR, WILLIAM (ca. 1460-ca. 1513)
The most brilliant of the late-medieval Scottish poets.
Dunbar graduated from St. Andrews University in- For the next twenty years biographical evidence
is lacking, but he may have been abroad; in 1500–01 he
was in England. The most fully documented period in
Dunbar’s life is from 1500 to 1513; he then received a
generous “pensioun,” or annual salary, as a “servitour”
in the household of James IV. Yet the details of Dunbar’s
court career remain mysterious. This is one reason why
it is diffi cult to establish the chronology of the 80 or so
poems attributed to him. Although a chaplain, Dunbar
never obtained high offi ce in the church. Several poems
voice hopes for a benefi ce, yet there is no evidence that
he obtained even the humble “kirk scant coverit with
hadder [heather]” mentioned in one of them. It is likely
DUNBAR, WILLIAM