Dufay isorhythmic motets playlist: [ Ссылка ]

Salve flos Tuscae gentis [Isorhythmic motet]
Composer: Guillaume Dufay (ca. 1397 - 1474)
Performers: Huelgas Ensemble, dir. Paul Van Nevel
Score transcription by: Alejandro Enrique Planchart
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"The thirteen isorhythmic motets written by Guillaume Dufay must all be regarded as belonging to the first half of his career. In fact, the last of them, probably written in 1442, may be seen as a symbolic farewell to the Middle Ages. The series does not form a unified cycle in itself, but each of the works is a pièce de circonstance, sometimes written with intervals of several years between them. However, they are all aesthetically defined by a single common denominator: in all thirteen of these works Dufay makes use of a technique called isorhythm. The isorhythmic motet is a composition in which a rhythmic formula, or period, is constantly repeated in one or more of the parts while the melodic material changes. The number of times that this rhythmic periods is repeated varies from two to eight in extreme cases. The number of repetitions is, of course, dependent on the length of the rhythmic period, which may vary from units of four breves or longae to as many as forty. This isorhythm must appear in the tenor part, but may also be used in other parts. It occurs in some of Dufay's isorhythmic motets that all of the voices must be 'subjected' to isorhythmic treatment. Naturally, the rhythmic formulation varies from one voice to another; otherwise we would be dealing with homophony. The term `isorhythm' dates from the twentieth century. It was coined at the end of the nineteenth century by the German musicologist Friedrich Ludwig when he discovered and described the phenomenon in thirteenth-century motets. Color and talea, two concepts inherent to the very nature of isorhythm, were, however, mentioned in the thirteenth century (Johannes de Garlandia in his De Mensurabili Musica) and in the fourteenth century (Johannes de Muris in his Libellus Cantus Mensurabilis). Talea is the term used for the repeated rhythmic period, while color denotes the repeated melody. In the fourteenth century the principle of isorhythm developed into a decisive compositional technique with complex structures and numerous variants.

Thus, for instance, isorhythm was not longer restricted to the tenores, but could be applied in the other parts as well, which meant that the length of the isorhythmic period did not always coincide in the different voices. At the crucial turning point of the isorhythm, i.e. at the end of a talea, an intensification of the rhythmic complexity takes place by means of hockets, syncopation, and noticeably shorter note values. These passages are significant moments because the inner structure of the motet comes to the surface: the contrast between the virtuosic rhythmic structure at the end of one talea and the generally tranquil beginning of the next one is striking even on a first hearing. By far the most important development of the isorhythmic motet took place at the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, culminating in Guillaume Dufay's cycle, with the final talea of the work now being composed in diminution. Furthermore, this trend became more pronounced in the last stages of the evolution of the isorhymic motet. For instance, a color (melody) would be repeated in four different rhythmic forms, provided that the repetitions were subject to a specific mathematical proportion from one to another [...]."

~Paul Van Nevel, translation by Derek Yeld
Source: CD booklet
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