Guillaume DuFay: Les messes a teneur [2CD]

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Editor's info:
What did it mean for Guillaume Du Fay (ca. 1397-1474), chameleon-like expert in every musical genre of his day, to compose four settings of the Mass Ordinary toward the end of his life? Looking back from the vantage point of the next generation, when the polyphonic mass reigned supreme, it might be tempting to interpret these works as a self-conscious summa of Du Fays career an achievement akin to Haydns London Symphonies or Beethovens late string quartets. On a purely musical level these comparisons are apt. Each mass stakes out unique musical terrain, they are often strikingly experimental, and the entire set is shimmeringly beautiful from beginning to end, revealing a composer at the height of his powers.

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"I never get tired of listening to Du Fay, partly because his music is just so dang pretty and partly because it occupies such a fascinating and strange transitional space between the late medieval period and the high Renaissance."
by Rick Anderson