Guillaume Dufay: Compositional Mastery Of The 15th Century

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In 1501, Venetian printer Ottaviano Petrucci introduced to the music world the first collection of polyphonic compositions from moveable type. The book, entitled Odhecaton (Greek for one hundred songs) contained songs, sacred and secular, representing the compositional and more specifically contrapuntal masters of the time including Ockeghem, Obrecht, Josquin des Prez, and many of their esteemed colleagues. One composer’s work, however, was not included within any of Petrucci’s publications despite the fact that the previously named composers would have considered him a mentor in his field. Guillaume Dufay was indeed a leading light for composers during the 15th and 16th sixteenth centuries and whose life marked the beginning of the Renaissance period. So why was Dufay’s music seemingly ignored by many of his close successors? Perhaps it was because music and its composition were recognized as a day-to-day practice whereas, at the time, there was no immediate reason for documenting or preserving compositions, for historical purposes at least. Another logical reason was that as a result of so many compositional geniuses following in Dufay’s footsteps at the time, his once bright light was gradually becoming overshadowed by what was currently happening in the music world. Nonetheless, Guillaume Dufay was regarded with the highest respect by his contemporaries and to this day is recognized as one of the most influential composers of the western world. Although Dufay’s origin is somewhat uncertain, it is likely that he was born in the province of Hainaut in what is now Belgium around August of 1397. We do know that Dufay is first heard of as a choirboy at Cambrai Cathedral in 1409 where he remained at least until 1412, receiving an unprecedented musical education from composers Nicholas Malin and Richard Loqueville. Cambrai, a town of only about 33,000 today, was an

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