Guillaume Faugues

Guillaume Faugues was a French composer active roughly between 1460 and 1475, placed between the generations of Dufay and Ockeghem. Although little is known of his life, his music occupies an important place in the early history of the parody mass.

Between 1462 and 1463 he served as chaplain of the Sainte-Chapelle in Bourges, where in 1462 he briefly acted as master of the boy choristers; among his pupils was Philippe Basiron. It is almost certain that he overlapped with Ockeghem, who visited Bourges that same year.

Only five of his masses survive. Tinctoris praised his work, singling out the Missa Vinus vina vinum for its variety and placing Faugues among those authors worthy of men, demigods and even the immortal gods. His masses circulated widely in the 1460s and 1470s and appear to have influenced Johannes Martini.

All of them are built on secular cantus firmus melodies, treated freely, although their original contours and rhythms are generally preserved. Faugues presented the tenors in long note values and introduced three-voice imitation. In the masses based on polyphonic songs, such as Le serviteur and Je suis en la mer, he expanded the imitative passages of the model, and in Le serviteur the upper voice constantly paraphrases that of the song. For this reason he is accorded a prominent place among the origins of parody.

His artistic value, however, should not be overstated. By doubling the note values to accompany the tenor, the melody seems to stretch out, and extending the imitation to four voices does not improve the result. Dependence on the model makes the work more predictable than varied, and it is unclear whether the structural repetition reflects an artistic intention or mere convenience.

The Missa Vinus vina vinum displays the variety that Tinctoris admired, although its alternation of techniques is somewhat methodical beside the more fluent writing of Dufay or Busnoys. His late mass Je suis en la mer is, according to some judgements, his most elegant and genuinely varied work. His legacy lies above all in his role as a precursor of techniques that others developed with greater success.