Page 44 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained
P. 44
42
NOT A SINGLE PIECE OF
MUSIC COMPOSED BEFORE
THE LAST 40 YEARS …
IS WORTH HEARING
MISSA L’HOMME ARMÉ (c.1460),
GUILLAUME DUFAY
rom Franco-Flemish layering of voices. Following the
IN CONTEXT composer Guillaume Dufay lead of English musicians, who had
F onward, the harmonic already embraced the use of third
FOCUS language of music begins to sound intervals, Dufay allows the music
New harmonies
more familiar to modern listeners. to dwell on the interval’s sweet,
BEFORE Earlier composers had followed the less hollow sound. This extended
1430 Englishman Leonel harmonic ideals worked out by the the harmonic vocabulary and
Power composes Alma ancient Greek philosopher and created room for more voices. ■
redemptoris mater, possibly mathematician Pythagoras, based
the first Mass to use an on the “perfect” consonance of
identified cantus firmus—a octaves and fourth and fifth
“set song”—as the basis for intervals. Dufay’s innovation was
its melodic framework. to use chords featuring the third
interval in the scale as a harmony
1430 Rex seculorum is written note (mi in the sol-fa singing scale,
as a cantus firmus Mass in the following do and re). Historically,
English style, either by John the harmony of third intervals had
Dunstable or Leonel Power. been seen as somewhat dissonant,
to be used sparingly.
AFTER
1570 Italian Giovanni Secular sounds in church
Palestrina publishes a five- Dufay’s masses made much use of
voice setting of the Mass on the cantus firmus technique, which
the L’homme armé melody. built a piece around an already
existing melody, such as a well-
1999 Welsh composer Karl known sacred composition or a
Jenkins incorporates the plainchant. In L’homme armé,
L’homme armé folk song into Dufay chose a popular French folk Master of melody Guillaume Dufay
the first and final movements song with a distinctive melody that stands beside a portable organ in an
illumination from the 15th-century
of his Mass The Armed Man. lent itself well to a polyphonic poetic work, Le champion des dames.
See also: Micrologus 24–25 ■ Magnus liber organi 28–31 ■ Missa Pange
lingua 43 ■ Canticum Canticorum 46–51 ■ St. Matthew Passion 98–105
US_042-043_Guillaume_Dufay.indd 42 26/03/18 1:00 PM
