notes in transcription) implies a grouping of three breves into perfect longs. That sort of supple, “natural”
artfulness—artfulness within apparent simplicity—is the mark of a really successful assimilation of the
“English sound” into the continental literate tradition.
We have already met Guillaume Du Fay (d. 1474) in chapter 8, and know from his extraordinary motet
Nuper rosarum flores that he was an extremely ambitious composer. He had a brilliant international
career, with phases in Italy (including a stint in the papal choir) and at the court of Savoy, a duchy in the
Alpine region of what is now eastern France and western Switzerland, before returning to his native
region as a canon at the cathedral of Cambrai, near the present-day border of France and Belgium. His
setting of the Marian hymn Ave maris stella (previously encountered as Ex. 2-7a), while also fairly
modest as befits the genre, is more ornate than Binchois’s and assimilates the chant melody much more
thoroughly to the style of the courtly chanson (Ex. 11-24). As befits Du Fay’s glamorous career and his
comprehensive stylistic range, even his hymn settings are unmistakably the work of the most enterprising
composer of the age.
This greater assimilation is accomplished in two ways. First, Du Fay’s chant paraphrase is far more
decorative than Binchois’s; there is nothing in the Binchois setting like the first measure of Du Fay’s, in
which the plainchant’s opening leap of a fifth is filled in with what amounts to an original melody. The
cadential structure of Du Fay’s setting is also much freer from that of the plainchant than Binchois’s—and
quite purposefully so. The first cadence, for example, joins the finishing note of maris to the first note of
stella, creating a stopping point on C, a note to which no cadence is made in the original chant. The
alternation of cadences on C and D thus obtained in the first half of the setting is then replayed in the
second half (C on virgo, Don porta), creating a bipartite structural symmetry not at all typical of
plainchant melodies but very typical of courtly songs, whose “fixed forms” always comprised two main
sections.
Even more boldly, Du Fay writes an alternate third part, labeled “contratenor sine faulx bourdon,”
that replaces the “derived” fauxbourdon voice with a full-fledged contrapuntal line that behaves exactly
like the traditional chanson contratenor. It occupies the same register as the tenor, with which it frequently
crosses. The first crossing is a marvelous joke, in fact. The first measure of the new contratenor coincides
with—or rather, is disguised as—the beginning of the fauxbourdon realization, so that when the downbeat
G replaces the expected F# in the second measure, it comes as an attention-grabbing surprise. That G
forms a chord with the other voices—a chord that simply cannot occur in a fauxbourdon. The contratenor
stays under the tenor all the way to the end of the fourth bar, completely changing the harmonization of the
chant-derived part and converting the setting for all practical purposes into a chanson. Then the
contratenor reverts to its initial position above the tenor by leaping an octave, which (as we will see in a
moment) was a most typical sort of cadential behavior for a chanson contratenor at this time. All in all,
Du Fay’s setting shows him to be a singularly self-conscious artist and one especially aware of the
distinguishing features and requirements of genres. As we have observed before, that sort of awareness
enables an artist to play upon, and fully engage, the expectations of an informed audience.
EX. 11-24A Guillaume Du Fay, Ave maris stella in fauxbourdon