Guillaume Du Fay: The Life and Works

by Alejandro Enrique Planchart

Overview

This volume explores the work of one of medieval music's most important figures, and in so doing presents an extended panorama of musical life in Europe at the end of the middle ages. Guillaume Du Fay rose from obscure beginnings to become the most significant composer of the fifteenth century, a man courted by kings and popes, and this study of his life and career provides a detailed examination of his entire output, including a number of newly discovered works. As well as offering musical analysis, this volume investigates his close association with the Cathedral of Cambrai, and explores how, at a time when music was becoming increasingly professionalised, Du Fay forged his own identity as 'a composer'. This detailed biography will be highly valuable for those interested in the history of medieval and church music, as well as for scholars of Du Fay's musical legacy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781108547703
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/06/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	26 MB
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About the Author

Alejandro Planchart's wide-ranging and distinguished career as composer, conductor and scholar began in Caracas, Venezuela and took him via Yale and Harvard to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is now Emeritus Professor. In 1963 he founded an early music ensemble, Cappella Cordina, with whom he issued a pioneering series of recordings of medieval and renaissance music. His book The Repertory of Tropes at Winchester (1977) won the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities in 1979. In 2006 he received the Howard M. Brown Award from Early Music America and in 2013 he received the Medal of the City of Tours. He was also winner, in 2009, of the Arion Prize from the Cambridge Society for Early Music for his work on Guillaume Du Fay, of which this book is the long-awaited summation.

Table of Contents

Volume I. The Life: List of illustrations; List of music examples; List of tables; Acknowledgments; The organization of the Cathedral of Cambrai; A note on currency; List of abbreviations; Prologue; 1. Origins and first years (1397–1414); 2. The beginnings of a musician's career (1414–28); 3. The Papal Chapel and the Court of Savoy (1428–39); 4. At the Cathedral of Cambrai (1439–50); 5. The courtier (1450–58); 6. The last years (1458–74); 7. Epilogue: historical aftermath. Volume II. The Works: List of music examples; List of tables; Acknowledgments; A note on currency; List of abbreviations; 8. Guillermus Du Fay, Musicus; 9. Isorhythmic and mensuration motets; 10. Cantilena, chant paraphrase, and new-style motets; 11. Music for the office; 12. Ordinary movements; 13. The propers; 14. The early mass cycles; 15. The late mass cycles; 16. The songs; Appendices; 1. Choristers and singers in Cambrai in the long fifteenth century; 2. The Magistri puerorum at Cambrai in the fifteenth century; 3. Grammar teachers and Rectores scholarum connected to the Cathedral in the fifteenth century; 4. The last will of Guillaume Du Fay and its probate; Bibliography; Index.