Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy in the context of "Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor"

The Duchy of Savoy was a territorial entity of the Savoyard state that existed from 1416 until 1847 and was a possession of the House of Savoy.It was created when Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, raised the County of Savoy into a duchy for Amadeus VIII. The duchy was an Imperial fief, subject of the Holy Roman Empire, until 1792, with a vote in the Imperial Diet. From the 16th century, Savoy belonged to the Upper Rhenish Circle.

Its territory included the current French departments of Savoie, Haute-Savoie, and the Alpes-Maritimes, the current Italian region of Aosta Valley, a large part of Piedmont and the County of Geneva in Switzerland, which was then lost to the Old Swiss Confederacy. The main Vulgar languages that were spoken within the Duchy of Savoy were Arpitan and Piedmontese.

The titles of the count of Savoy, and then duke of Savoy, are titles of nobility attached to the historical territory of Savoy. Since its creation, in the 11th century, the House of Savoy held the county, the ruler of which was originally styled "count," then later as "duke"; several of these rulers were called "king" at one point in history or another.

The County of Savoy was elevated to a duchy at the beginning of the 15th century, bringing together all the territories of the Savoyard state under Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy. In the 18th century, Victor Amadeus II annexed the Kingdom of Sardinia to the historical possessions of the Duchy, and from then on, the Savoyard dukes also held the title of Kings of Sardinia. The House of Savoy later went on to rule the Kingdom of Italy from 1861 to 1946 when the monarchy was abolished.

Guillaume Du Fay (/djuːˈfaɪ/ dyoo-FEYE, French: [ɡijom dy fa(j)i]; also Dufay, Du Fayt; 5 August 1397 – 27 November 1474) was a composer and music theorist of early Renaissance music, who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish. Considered the leading European composer of his time, his music was widely performed and reproduced. Du Fay was well-associated with composers of the Burgundian School, particularly his colleague Gilles Binchois, but was never a regular member of the Burgundian chapel himself.

While he is among the best-documented composers of his time, Du Fay's birth and family is shrouded with uncertainty, though he was probably the illegitimate child of a priest. He was educated at Cambrai Cathedral, where his teachers included Nicolas Grenon and Richard Loqueville, among others. For the next decade, Du Fay worked throughout Europe: as a subdeacon in Cambrai, under Carlo I Malatesta in Rimini, for the House of Malatesta in Pesaro, and under Louis Aleman in Bologna, where he was ordained priest. As his fame began to spread, he settled in Rome in 1428 as musician of the prestigious papal choir, first under Pope Martin V and then Pope Eugene IV, where he wrote the motets Balsamus et munda cera, Ecclesie militantis and Supremum est mortalibus. Amid Rome's financial and political disorder in the 1430s, Du Fay took a leave of absence from the choir to serve Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy.