Guillaume Dufay was a highly influential Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance born in 1397 near Brussels. As one of the most influential composers of the 15th century, he helped develop new musical forms like the cyclic mass. He composed many masses, motets, and settings of chant and secular songs in forms like ballades and rondeaus. Dufay spent much of his career in Cambrai and was one of the first to design the technique of parallel writing known as fauxbourdon.