Cantica Symphonia - Dufay: The Masses for 1453 (2014)

Crammed onto one new disc from Cantica Symphonia on Glossa are two of Guillaume Dufay’s most important polyphonic works brought alongside each other for the first time on CD: the Missa Se la face ay pale and the Missa L’Homme armé. The two masses were amongst the first in history to use popular songs for their cantus firmus: Dufay’s own chanson for the first mass and the anonymous popular tune – “The Armed Man” – for the second.

The year 1453 was an extraordinary one in Western Christendom with the Fall of Constantinople following on the acquisition by Louis, Duke of Savoy of what is now known as the Shroud of Turin. As renowned scholar Anne Walters Robertson describes in her incisive scene-setting analysis for the booklet, these two events provided the backdrop for Dufay – newly recalled by the Duke to the Court of Savoy – to compose these remarkable commemorative masses.

As is the case with its general interpretative outlook, Cantica Symphonia opt for performances which embrace the use of instruments such as slide trumpets, sackbuts, fiddles and the organ alongside vocal forces. Director Giuseppe Maletto and organist Guido Magnano discuss their reasons for such instrumental involvement in the CD booklet. This is the fourth recording of music by Guillaume Dufay – to add to two volumes devoted to motets and one to chansons – from Cantica Symphonia on the Glossa label, and it resumes the Italian ensemble’s remarkable coverage of 15th-century treasures.