Dufay

Guillaume Dufay

The early music revival has tended to focus on Dufay’s sacred music – the great masses and motets. His secular chansons however are miniature masterpieces of the genre. He was at home in French, Italian and Latin, and could turn his hand to love songs in all the so-called formes fixe of the period. Most were written early in his career – Je me Complains is actually dated 12th July 1425, when the composer was in his early-to-mid twenties. Ma Belle Dame Souverain is a similarly early work. La Dolce Vista is a curiosity: the source is incomplete so we don’t know what the original form might have been, and in the live version we decide on the form as we go along. The sanctus track is based on a short piece of chant from the Introit to the Missa Sancti Jacobi, which also dates from the 1420s. For further information on the composer, see David Fallows’ definitive monograph Dufay (Vintage Books, 1988).

John Potter

Setting up for Being Dufay, Vienna Konzerthaus, Jan 2009

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