DUFAY Chansons • Antoine Guerber, dir; Diabolus in Musica • ALPHA 116 (75:57 Text and Translation)

This program includes 15 songs, not counting four more played on the clavicytherium. The latter group includes Se la face ay pale in a lovely rendition and the most familiar song by Conrad Paumann, Dufay’s exact contemporary, but the notes offer no excuse for the inclusion of the odd man out. This is by no means a greatest-hits disc. Several of the most familiar songs of Dufay are omitted, while five of these songs are among the considerable number that had never been recorded before the Medieval Ensemble’s complete set (6:1, reissued on five CDs). That set put a damper on competition for some years, but more recently we have had single CDs from Michael Posch (20:2), Continens Paradisi (29:1), Tetraktys, and Giuseppe Maletto (both 30:2). Like all five collections, the new disc uses voices with instruments. The alternative of singing without instruments can be heard chiefly from Christopher Page, who scattered some of Dufay’s songs among his Gothic Voices CDs. Fortunately, eight of the songs on the new disc are not found on any of the other four single CDs and four more are found on only one, so this disc can profitably be added to whatever you already have. The five recent CDs are uniformly more interesting than the rather perfunctory traversal of the complete works. (The Medieval Ensemble followed it with a much better complete chansons of Ockeghem.)

Most of the songs on this disc adopt one of three forms of the time: rondeau, ballade, and bergerette. The music is divided among four singers, and with one exception they are accompanied by some or all of the four players. This ensemble I have always found to offer interesting and well-designed programs, and this one is thoroughly delightful as it unfolds. The songs fall into four groups, labeled grief, praise, love, and celebration. The notes identify the circumstances of composition where known. Since Posch and Continens Paradisi offer sung renditions in only half of their selections and Tetraktys uses only one singer in each song, this disc is one of the best entries among those cited. We are not going to hear the complete songs of Dufay very soon, but this disc covers part of the ground very nicely. Don’t pass it up.

FANFARE: J. F. Weber