Du Fay’s Agnus Dei represents a new relationship between a Mass setting and its “raw material”: it is
not just a plainchant or a single line extracted from its polyphonic context that lies behind the Mass
setting, but a preexistent polyphonic passage that is being cannibalized in its entirety. We are at the
borderline between contrafactum—the fitting out of old songs with new texts for new purposes—and the
kind of intricate polyphonic remodeling that in the next century would be called “parody.”
THE ENGLISH KEEP THINGS HIGH
The musical cult of Mary reached its zenith in the place where the new-style motet began, in England. As
usual, precious little pre-Reformation source material survived the sixteenth-century holy wars, but just as
with the Old Hall manuscript at the front end of the century, a single enormous volume survives to tell us
about British worship music at the back end. That book is the so-called Eton Choirbook, compiled for
evensong (Vespers) services at Eton College during the reign of Henry VII (1485–1509), the first Tudor
king of England, but containing a repertory that had been forming since Dunstable’s time. (A motet by
Dunstable himself is listed in the index to the manuscript, but about half of the original contents, including
Dunstable’s work, is lost.)
Eton College was founded by King Henry VI in 1440 to educate future government officials. It has
long been famous as the largest of the so-called British “public schools,” which are in fact private
schools that charge tuition and to which entry is gained by competitive examination. Eton was founded
jointly with King’s College, Cambridge, and has ever since been a sort of preparatory school for King’s,
which still reserves a certain number of scholarships each year for Etonians. Both schools were (and
King’s still is) famous for their men-and-boys choirs.
Eton was officially franchised as “the College Roiall of our Ladie of Eton,” and its charter, addressed
to the Virgin Mary herself, proclaims its dedication “to thy praise, thy glory, and thy worship” (ad laudem
gloriam et cultum tuum). The school’s large choral endowment was specifically authorized by its
statutes, as was the choir’s daily obligation to serenade the Blessed Virgin, as it were, with a polyphonic
votive antiphon. Every evening, the statutes directed, the choir was to enter the chapel in formal
procession, two by two, sing the Lord’s Prayer before the crucifix, and then proceed to the image of the