Very few Masses before 1500 boast a discography in double figures; only Machaut’s comes to mind, and Dufay’s Missa Se la face ay pale. It may be the earliest polyphonic Mass to have been based not on chant but on a secular song, and a credible occasion has recently been proposed for its composition: Dufay was with the Savoyard court at Chambéry in 1453 when the famous Shroud of Turin was acquired with great fanfare by Duke Louis. (The song in question begins with the words ‘If my face is pale, it is because of love’, which can be read as an allegorical expression of Christ’s suffering made visible on the relic.) Most important of all, it is the first of a miraculous series of Masses by Dufay, extending to the very end of his life. Each is unique, but the design of Se la face ay pale is both clear and monumental, and its Lydian mode, much of it centred on C, sounds very familiar to our tonally conditioned ears.

That it can sustain as many recordings as it’s had to date is therefore hardly surprising. David Munrow’s, issued in 1974 for the 400th anniversary of Dufay’s death (EMI, now on Erato, 5/74), still has a special place 50 years on. The use of two singers on each part and a comparatively restrained instrumental consort, which supports rather than competes with them, was a departure for Munrow himself, and anticipates later performance of this repertory and the research that underpins it. And what voices. It’s hard to compete with the likes of James Bowman, Rogers Covey-Crump and Paul Elliott in their prime, especially when Munrow coaxes such sensitive shading and shaping from them. Subsequent performances handle certain details differently (the slow tempos at the start of movements, for example), but even the things one might now change have a purpose: the gradual addition of voices in the Gloria and Credo brings the closing statement of the song (as close to straight quotation as Dufay gets) gloriously into focus, like an epiphany. The final ‘Amens’ fairly sizzle with excitement.

One has to wait until this century for accounts that match it: before that, both Chiaroscuro (Nuova Era) and The Hilliard Ensemble (Hilliard Live, now Coro, 11/98) in their post-Hillier vocal quartet guise demonstrated (negatively) that the work really needs two singers on each part to come across properly, while mixed choirs (with several voices to a part, such as the Belgian Laudantes Consort) are also unsatisfying, usually because of a lower technical standard. (A significant exception is the 2015 account on Arsis from Boston’s Church of the Advent Choir, which, while equal to the work’s technical challenges, confirms my feeling that early Renaissance polyphony is basically chamber music for vocalists.) Another option, marrying voices and instruments (eg Capella Cordina on Lyrichord), typically failed to convince as Munrow had done.

The Boston ensemble, incidentally, buck the trend established since 2000, which Munrow anticipated: two-to-a-part a cappella is the set-up chosen by Diabolus in Musica (Alpha, 9/05), The Binchois Consort (Hyperion, 3/09) and Cut Circle (Musique en Wallonie, 7/16 – the latter with female sopranos). All three bring great pleasure, not least because their sonic and vocal approaches are otherwise so very contrasted. Cut Circle follow the brisk tempos favoured by director Jesse Rodin’s mentor, the late Alejandro Planchart (director of Capella Cordina), but contrapuntal details can get slightly lost, notwithstanding a very clear sound. For energy and compactness, however, they are hard to beat.

Diabolus in Musica’s interpretation pays explicit tribute to Munrow, adopting his tempos and monumentality of sound, almost diametrically opposed to Cut Circle. I find the rough edge of the voices very appealing, but over the course of 35 minutes some may find their ‘wall of sound’ approach insufficiently inflected. (There are no such problems in Diabolus’s later account of Dufay’s astonishing Missa Ave regina celorum, the rediscovery of which has been a welcome by-product of researching this.) Midway between these two, The Binchois Consort are lucid and intimate, with the Propers for the feast of St Maurice (credibly attributed to Dufay) thrown in for good measure. But ultimately, I find myself returning to Munrow’s direction and the star quality of his singers, so selflessly deployed in the cause of re-establishing Dufay as the ‘light of singers’ of his time.

Recommended Recording

Early Music Consort of London / David Munrow (Erato)

It’s a refreshingly crowded field, but this is arguably the earliest recording of a Mass by Dufay (or perhaps any 15th-century Mass) that one can still unreservedly admire. Top that.