Gregorian Chant Essay

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Cody Alvarado Music Theory 7/29/12 Gregorian Chant Guillaume Dufay - 1397 -1474, Ave Maris Stella Guillaume Dufay (Du Fay, Du Fayt) (August 5, 1397 – November 27, 1474) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. As a boy he sang in the choir of Cambrai Cathedral. Ordained a priest, he acquired a high reputation for learnedness. In 1428 he joined the papal singers in Rome, by which time his works had made him famous. He returned to Cambrai 1440, where he would supervise the cathedral's music for the rest of his life, apart from a period (145158) working for the duke of Savoy. Many musicians came to learn under him, and he enjoyed renown as the greatest living composer. His surviving works, which employ a richly harmonic texture, include some 90 chansons, 13 motets, and at least 6 complete masses, including such early cantus-firmus works as L'Homme arm and Se la face ay pale. Dufay was among the most influential composers of the 15th century, and his music was copied, distributed and sung everywhere that polyphony had taken root. Almost all composers of the succeeding generations absorbed some elements of his style. Dufay wrote in most of the common forms of the day, including masses, motets, Magnificats, hymns, simple chant settings in fauxbourdon,and antiphons within the area of sacred music, and rondeaux, ballades,virelais and a few other chanson types within the realm of secular music. None of his surviving music is specifically instrumental, although instruments were certainly used for some of his secular music, especially for the lower parts; all of his sacred music is vocal. Instruments may have been used to reinforce the voices in actual performance for almost any portion of his output. In his lifetime, Dufay wrote seven complete masses, 28 individual Mass movements, 15 settings of chant used in Mass Propers, three Magnificats, two
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