Bon jour, bon mois was undoubtably composed for the celebration of New Years day. The word "estraine" in the title refers directly to a medieval tradition of giving gifts on that day, special presents called éstraines, that were crucial gestures in the keeping or creation of social ties, amorous, or diplomatic. As a composer, Dufay would naturally have made many of his important offerings in music. Johannes Ockeghem is known to have offered the French king a song on New Years day in 1459. From that fact, we can well imagine that a number of the ten surviving New Years songs by Dufay, as well as those uncountable which have not survived, were made, and offered as éstraines.



The one stanza of Bon jour that we have thanks the Lord for the gift of a good year. Do hear in this the flattering of a patron? We cannot speculate with any certainty, but during much of the 1430s, when Bon jour was composed, Dufay was at the court of Savoy, an environment so conducive to music that Dufay's productivity was always much higher there than anywhere else of the many places he lived. Although it does express a conventional emotion, we wonder if the bounty the poet is thankful for in Bon jour was the bounty of music.



Naturally, as a piece for New Years revelry, it is not as intricate as most of Dufay's other work of the period. By the 30s there is already beginning to seek a much more refined, economical musical vocabulary. This tendency was not to bear its great fruits until after 1450, but Bon jour is one of the pieces may indicate the start of that development. The discantus line is a rollicking, bouncy treat that breaks into shimmering little flourishes, and goes fairly far on just the pleasure of sequenced motifs, syncopated to the right of the beats. It plays well at an up tempo, and seems entirely designed to delight and charm.

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