EX. 11-20C Guillaume Du Fay, Vos qui secuti estis me (Communion from Missa Sancti Jacobi), first phrase as realized in
performanceyou will be simulating the “contenance angloise” just the way Martin Le Franc jokingly said Du Fay and
Binchois did it: En fainte, en pause, et en muance, which roughly means “in faking, in relaxing, and in
transposition [i.e., making hexachord mutations].”
FAUXBOURDON AND FABURDEN
Example 11-20 was actually composed by Du Fay himself. It is the concluding item in his Missa Sancti
Jacobi, a “plenary” setting of the Mass for Saint James (that is, a setting that includes both the Proper and
the Ordinary). Circumstantial evidence suggests that the Mass may have been written for the Church of
San Giacomo Maggiore (Saint James the Greater) in Bologna, where Du Fay was sojourning in 1427 and
- If that date is correct, then Du Fay’s Communion is the earliest surviving specimen of this technique
for deriving three parts from two to achieve an instant-English effect. It would be rash, however, to call
Du Fay the inventor of the technique or the year 1427 or 1428 the exact year of its invention on the basis
of such scanty data. Still, Du Fay was one of the recognized specialists in the technique, with twenty-four
surviving specimens to his name (four times as many as Binchois, the runner-up).
The other important distinguishing feature of the new style was that the cantus part, not the tenor,