As his career progressed and his fame grew, Dufay increasingly took up the four-voice vocal texture, which was to be characteristic of the early Renaissance as a whole. His four cantus firmus masses Se la face ay pale, L'homme arme, Ecce ancilla domini, and Ave regina caelorum are landmarks in what was to become the dominant style of mass composition. Se la face ay pale is probably the earliest surviving mass based on a secular theme. Previous cantus firmus masses were based on liturgical chant.
The cantus firmus for Missa Se la face ay pale was taken from a chanson Dufay had written when he was about thirty years of age. The words are in the nature of a ballade, so instead of rhymes, the same final syllables are repeated in a different sense.
Structurally and textually it is quite different from the other chansons he wrote, suggesting that he chose it for its distinguishable qualities (). It is also suggested that Se la face ay pale was written for the duchess of Savoy, leading one to believe that the Mass was also written for a celebration in the Savoy family (). Dufay's masses were at the forefront for innovations at his time. He was among the first to expand the voices to four parts, and under his influence the masses became an outlet for a composer to express himself. .
As the number of polyphonic settings of the Mass increased, the Burgundian Composers in the 15th century aimed to unify the entire ordinary as a whole. Until this point the sections of the ordinary were always composed as separate pieces. Now composers like Dufay were basing all the sections of the ordinary on a single melodic subject. That single melodic line, or cantus firmus, would be placed in the tenor and all the parts of all the movements would be constructed around this line. The cantus firmus for these Masses were either borrowed from plainchant or even secular tunes. Composers like Dufay would take an existing secular tune, normally from a chanson, and would use the song's original rhythm, but the pattern of the melody could be made faster or slower in relation to the other voices.
