Music for St James the Greater
"The moon of all music, and the light of all singers," was how one  contemporary observer described the illustrious 15th-century French composer  Guillaume Dufay. Dufay not only enjoyed great acclaim as a musician, but he also  enjoyed an unusually long life--he died at 74--which he spent in service to  several noble patrons in Italy and as canon of Cambrai Cathedral in France. His  music exudes an amazing richness and vitality, due as much to its luminous  harmonic writing as to its lively, complex rhythms. The veneration of St. James  was of enormous importance in the Middle Ages, signified by the thousands of  pilgrimages to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Dufay's Mass is  unusual and remarkable for its stylistic diversity, a feature of the work that's  prompted much musicological investigation. For most of us, however, the sheer  beauty of the music--exemplified in these resplendent performances--speaks for  itself.--David Vernier