Dufay: Messe “Se la face ay pale”

The cantus-firmus mass was perfected by Guillaume Dufay, and during his career he brought the genre to its highest point of sophistication. The cantus-firmus is a composing technique very often used in 15th-century in which a melodic fragment, generally from a popular song, is used as unifying thematic material for all the parts of the mass.

David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London gave in 1973 a splendid rendition of one of the most famous examples composed by Dufay, the Mass “Se la face ay pale” (If my face is pale), written after his own homonymous melancholic love ballade.