Dufay, Supremum est mortabilus

Guillaume Dufay (c. 1397-1474) was a significant figure among the composers of the Burgundian School, which included Binchois, Busnois, and Dunstaple. We have not featured any of these composers yet in this series, although we included Dufay’s music in our Early Sacred Music course.

Dufay also played a role in the transition of music from the medieval to the Renaissance. In Supremum est mortabilus, he is still using isorhythm—a prominent feature of late medieval music. But this is also the earliest work that calls specifically for fauxbourdon. In music history, Dufay’s name is forever associated with fauxbourdon. Fauxbourdon (false bass) entailed voices moving parallel to one another at the interval of a sixth. The fourth below the top voice completed what our modern ears recognize as a diatonic triad in first inversion. If that’s too much theory for you, just know that you are hearing harmonies that sound like they belong to our tonal system. It’s not tonality yet, but it’s a mix of sonorities that partly sound medieval and partly modern. That mixture, to me at least, gives Dufay’s music a particularly interesting sound.

The work has an unusual feature when the contrapuntal texture changes suddenly at the end (5:54) at the naming of Pope Eugene IV and the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund. Dufay pent part of his professional life in Italy in the service of the pope, becoming a member of the Papal choir and also an ordained priest, and his prominence as a composer was then well established. That also placed him in the midst of ongoing political struggles concerning the papacy. He later obtained a law degree before returning to his native Cambrai in northern France as canon at the Cathedral.