# we need somesort of indiana jones to find the lost Dufay Requiem



## deprofundis (Apr 25, 2014)

As i recall what i read Ockeghem was the first to write a requiem that did manage to survive, Dufay came first but Dufay Requiem vanished so my theory is somewhere there is this dufay requiem written it's not lost forever oh please dont tell me???

Can a musicologist and archeologist dig up this partition somewhere what it burned or they dont know where to find it?

Dufay requiem most have been something 

:tiphat: 

Oh and im dead sereous...


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## Metairie Road (Apr 30, 2014)

Are you sure that a Dufay Requiem Mass even exists?

I'm no expert on Dufay or Renaissance Masses, nor do I speak Flemish, so I can't check the accuracy of the English translation of the source material - i.e. Dufay's will, which seems to be the source of the legend.

"...that twelve or more capable men (...) on the day following my funeral sing *my requiem mass* in the Chapel of St. Stephen (Cambrai) and for this I bequeath four pounds Parisian."

"my requiem mass" is a bit vague. Was he referring to the service or a composition?

There may be other supporting evidence for the existence of a Dufay Requiem Mass (for twelve voices apparently), but I haven't seen it.

I'm sorry if I've burst your bubble.

Best Wishes
Metairie Road


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

> He also wrote a Requiem mass around 1460, which is lost.


From the wiki pages.


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## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

There are many many important repertoirs from early music ages are considered lost or missing, some maybe retrievable but some certainly will never be. I have made into 2 categories of such losses:
1-Unretrievable losses dued to *known* disasters that are known to have destroyed the libraries where musical scores were once stored. The most obvious cases of this category is the 17th century Tono Humano and sacred repertoirs created under João IV de Portugal（1604-1656）,the king was particularly fond of the Tono Humano genre(secular or spiritual spanish/portuguese songs), he collected all the scores of Tonos Humanos he could get, all of the kings huge collection is destroyed by tsunami in 1755, thus 90% of the 17th century Tono Humanos was totally wiped out.

2-Missing music, which always haunts with possibilities of either being rediscovered again or being lost forever under some *unknown* sort of destructive events in the long course of time. Sometime early composers deliberately hid or destroy their own compositions,there are known records of such kind of event too, some exercised their will some did not or failed fortunately.

I had been doing researches based on internet about missing music, I am sure there are at least 10-20% of the presumed lost works can be found again, but they are under constant danger of being destroyed if not retrieved in time. With time goes on without rediscovery, the retrievable works will be less and less. After research I came to two important conclusions, one is a good news and another is a bad one. The good news is that the recorded early music forms only about 1-5% of the total amount that survived to our day. The amount of unrecorded scores are very enormous! But the bad news is entailed by the good news, it is difficult to maintain the totality of such an amount of hsitorical scores, also the effort paid to maintain and digitalize the old score is seriously insufficiant, whether it is either dued to the lack of sponsorship or general interests in the early music. It is almost certain that every year we lost several these never-heard-of old pieces from libraries or some unknown shelters. But I am sure, if a global project dedicated to preservation and rediscovery the early musical heritages, many more missing pieces will be found. I had made a list of recently known rediscovery of presumed lost pieces, one of them is of particular interest, an important compilation of sacred cantatas by Johann Pachelbels(1653-1704) teacher Georg Caspar Wecker(1632-1695) is listed on "bach-canata" website as lost, *XVIII Geistliche Concerten, 2-4vv, 5 insts ad lib (1695)*, but this work has been rediscovered in Poland around 2005 and since 2010-2012 available in print, however, the webpage never up-dated about the rediscovery. Such a redisvery is exciting and can be expected of more works that are considered missing today. Maybe, the missing Dufey requiem could be among them, let us have hope.

There is another possibility of modern scholars deliberatley withhold many works which we can not even read of on the internet, for example, there is a rumor that many unknown works are extent but withold for some reason, for example, a book of Kapsbergers publication is known to be withheld from the public. I also suspect that many of Carissimi`s autographs are possibly being hidden by some secret societies of very high power. There are many many more possibly similar cases about JS Bach works too.

A non-profit project dedicated to the preservsation of european Early Music heritage(composed before 1000-1770) should be seriously organized and widely sponsored, if there is a project liek this, please let me known, I will surely donate at possible as I can. But I hope my money must not be dealing with music not of my priority interests, not with later music or african, asian, arab music. I would support preservation of oral heritages of world cultures after having achieved the priority goals.


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## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

Fear the lost, especially as Italy is sitting on an earthquake hotbed, we should be more aware of the invaluable historical treasures more vulnerable than ancient buildings and artefacts, the old scores and books. We should start to digitalize everything that is being held in all italian libraries. Remember Modern musicologists and librarians do not digitalize most of the old scores! They only choose to digitalize those dubbed as the most famous works, which only occupies less than 1% of the total scores there!! Also be reminded that, even many recorded works were not digitalized too. The works will not get lost in our day? No, we may still lost them even at a larger scale if do not take effort to preserve them.

Stop fixing your eyes on a few names like Vivaldi, JS Bach, Mozart, get arised to help preserve the most vulnerable also the most valuable heritages.


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## Metairie Road (Apr 30, 2014)

I don't think Indiana Jones is the right person for this job. He always leaves a trail of destruction wherever he goes. I'd say Robert Langdon.


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