Dufay Ballade

Guillaume Dufay’s mass, Missa Se La face ay pale is largely based on his previous ballade Se la face ay pale. In fact, the cantus firmus is completely based on the tenor line used in his ballade. Dufay maintained the durations that were used in the tenor part in his ballade, but he added verbal cue to change the durations when in performance. Because of this, all the different parts of the mass had the tenor line moving at different paces. The result of this is a different sounding polyphony in each part of the mass, but the tenor voice still has the same melody. Even though Dufay use the tenor line as his cantus firmus, and did not change the tenor line before doing so, it is very hard to recognize that he used the line directly from his