Faburden and Fauxbourdon

Author(s): Brian Trowell

Source: Musica Disciplina , 1959, Vol. 13 (1959), pp. 43-78
Published by: American Institute of Musicology Verlag Corpusmusicae, GmbH

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON

BRIAN TROWELL

How, where and when did Fauxbourdon begin? It would be safe to

say that no other question in musical history has received so much attention
as this one, over the past twenty years or so. Three dissertations, a book, a
round dozen of articles in learned journals, all dealing in whole or in part
with the origins of Fauxbourdon ? and still the crux remains: Faburden
or Fauxbourdon? English ancestry, or French? At risk of boring those who
have patiently followed the arguments of counsel on both sides over the
past decade, I must add yet another article to the bibliography and de
mand a re-trial: new evidence has come to light which shows that for all
this time the dispute has been proceeding from false premises. First, how
ever, we must summarise the main points made by prosecution and de
fence, Francophiles and Anglophiles, starting in the years 1936-7.
It was at this time that Bukofzer and Georgiades published their
valuable dissertations on the techniques of English discant and Faburden 1.
They printed complete and accurate texts of all the contemporary manu
scripts dealing with these practices, with full commentaries. Unknown to
either writer, the American philologist Sanford B. Meech had also pub
lished the three most important treatises a year before 2, but unfortunately
without calling in the services of an expert in fifteenth-century music; his
interpretations were therefore faulty. Previous historians had relied on
the inaccurate excerpts which Hawkins and Burney had included in their
suveys. Bukofzer and Georgiades, however, were able to show that writers
such as Riemann had gone far astray in their handling of discant and
Faburden. Both agreed in distinguishing Faburden from English discant.
The latter, they held, was a way of extemporising a piece of music in three
(or four) parts, using chiefly 8/s and % chords, over a plainsong which
appeared in the lowest voice. Faburden on the other hand they equated
with the continental manner of Fauxbourdon: it was a means of im
provising a piece of music in three parts by singing the plainsong an octave
above its original pitch in the upper voice, and accompanying it throughout

1 Manfred Bukofzer, Geschichte des englischen Diskants und des Fauxbourdons

nach den theoretischen Quellen, Strassburg, 1936; Thrasybulos Georgiades, Englische
Diskanttraktate aus der ersten H?lfte des 15. lahrhunderts, M?nchen, 1937.
2 Sanford B. Meech, "Three Fifteenth-Century English Musical Treatises",
in Speculum X, 1935, 235ff.

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44 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

with similar 8/s and 6/s chords supplied this time by the lower parts. At this
point, though, Bukofzer and Georgiades parted company. Georgiades
maintained the traditional view ? which Wooldridge had already ques
tioned ? that Faburden was exported to the continent in the decades fo
lowing Agincourt (1415), as one feature of the well-known contenance
angloise 3. But Bukofzer found that the earliest continental Fauxbourdon
pieces preceded the first references to the English practice by about
quarter of a century. He therefore came to the conclusion that Faburde
was an English adaptation of Fauxbourdon, whereby the written res fad
of the continental masters was converted into a technique of improvisation
on the lines of English discant 4. All subsequent writers who have take
part in the ensuing dispute have adopted one or the other of these positions.
It is the purpose of this article to demonstrate that Faburden was not
in fact the same thing as Fauxbourdon; and this fundamental change of
view amputates one horn of the dilemma round which the dispute dev
loped. It will not therefore be necessary to set out here all the arguments,
inferences and guesswork used on both sides of the controversy. But
we must take our bearings, nevertheless. The main combatants in recen
years were Heinrich Besseler and the late Rudolf von Ficker, and the
adopted the views of their own pupils, Bukofzer and Georgiades respect
vely. Their discussion centred on Besseler's important book Bourdon un
Fauxbourdon 5, and was carried on in the pages of Ada Musicologic
between 1951 and 1954 6. Meanwhile Bukofzer had published Fauxbou
don Revisited7, an invaluable article which complements and in some
instances corrects Besseler's book. N. Wallin followed with some interestin
conjectures which however fail to survive the scrutiny of the philologist 8
In 1957, Besseler felt that he was in a position to sum up the course o

3 Georgiade, Ib. 105; H. E. Wooldridge, The Polyphonie Period, Part

(The Oxford History of Music, 2nd. ed., rev. P. C. Buck, I), O.U.P., London
1929, 295-329.
4 Bukofzer, Ib., 12Iff.
5 Heinrich Besseler, Bourdon und Fauxbourdon, Leipzig 1950; see also "Der
Ursprung des Fauxbourdons", in Die Musikforschung, 1, 1948, 106ff.
6 Von Ficker's articles: "Zur Sch?pfungsgeschichte des Fauxbourdon", in Acta
Musicologica, 23, 1951, 93ff; and "Epilog zum Faburdon"^ Ib., 25, 1953, 127ff.
Besseler's replies: "Tonalharmonik und Vollklang", Ib., 24, 1952, 131ff.; and "Da
Neue in der Musik des 15. Jahrhunderts", Ib., 26, 1954, 75ff.
7 In The Musical Quarterly, 38, Jan. 1952, 22ff.
8 In Kongressbericht Bamberg, Kassel-Basel, 1954, 120-124; convincingly refuted
by Flasdieck in "Elisab. Faburden ...", op. cit. infra, 203-216.

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 45

the argument 9. Since then, Suzanne Clercx has stepped in with further
facts and inferences10.
An unusual feature of the dispute has been the part played by the philo
logists. In 1953, Hermann Flasdieck took up the cudgels on behalf of von
Ficker to say that, contrary to the accepted etymology, the word Faburdon
could not have evolved from the word Fauxbourdon n. Gustav Kirchner
replied in support of Besseler, upholding the conventional derivation 12.
As a sort of testimonial he quoted extracts only ( ! ) from the comments of
four eminent colleagues to whom he had sent Flasdieck's article. Their
replies ranged from the non-committal to the reactionary; on the whole,
no-one wished to abandon the accepted text-book etymology without
further enquiry, and one or two of Flasdieck's arguments were questioned.
Two years later Flasdieck replied to all objections, even turning some of
them to his own advantage, in a long article which exhaustively discusses
every conceivable aspect of the subject13. This article appeared in a philo
logical journal, and few musicologists will have taken the trouble to read
it. The philologists, however, must have seen it, and not one of them has
replied or raised any further complaint in two years. Since Flasdieck's
investigation remains the only detailed treatment of a topic which never
gave philologists any cause for serious thought until it was raised by
musical historians, it now seems likely to stand ; and Flasdieck's conclusions
are diametrically opposed to Besseler's. To go on talking of disagreement
among the philologists, and to dismiss Flasdieck's learned and minute
examination as a minority view, as Besseler and Clercx do'14, is surely to
try and exploit a situation which no longer exists ? however unpalatable
the facts.
The position today remains something of a deadlock. On philological

9 In "Das Ergebnis der Diskussion ?ber "Fauxbourdon" ", in Acta Musicologica,

29, 1957, 185ff.; the editors then closed their columns to this argument ? and
who shall blame them?
10 "Aux origines du faux-bourdon", in Revue de Musicologie, 40, Dec. 1957,
15 Iff.
il In "Franz, fauxbourdon und fr?hneuengl. faburden", in Acta Musicologica,
25, 1953, 11 Iff.
12 In "Franz?sisch faux-bourdon und fr?hneuenglish faburden (H. M. Flas
dieck). Epilog zum Faburdon (R. v. Ficker). Eine Erwiderung", Ib., 26, 1954,
85ff.
13 In "Elisab. Faburden "Fauxbourdon" and NE. Burden "Refrain" ", in Anglia,
74, 1956, 188ff.
14 Besseler, "Das Ergebnis ...", 187; his "Dufay in Rom", in Archiv f?r Musik
wissenschaft, 15, 1958, 2, again speaks of the overwhelming majority of the Anglicists'
(my translation), Clercx, "Aux origines ...", 154.

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46 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

grounds, Flasdieck 15 maintains that the word Faburdon must have pre
ceded the word Fauxbourdon. For musical and other reasons Besseler still
holds that the technique of Fauxbourdon was created and named by
Dufay in the Paris of 1427, where he met English musicians and decided
to transmute English discant by raising the plainsong from the lowest voice
to the upper, thereby turning it into a res fada with an ornamented treble
after the manner of a Burgundian chanson 16. There will be more to say
about the detail of Besseler's argument later on. Mme. Clercx conveniently
summarises the outlines of the whole controversy for us17; Besseler's
article of 1957 gives his latest published views, in which he has slightly
modified his position in deference to Bukofzer and Flasdieck.
Even before Besseler took up the question in real earnest, however, a
striking point had emerged from the work of Bukofzer and Georgiades.
According to them, neither of the only early theorists who discussed Fabur
den and Fauxbourdon at any length knew what he was talking about; or
if he did, he failed to express himself clearly on this one subject, though
in each case the rest of the treatise is lucidity itself. This seemed at best a
freakish coincidence. Had Bukofzer and Georgiades misinterpreted the
texts? Middle English is not always easy, even for an Englishman. A fresh
and unbiased examination of the anonymous tract in the Lansdowne ma
nuscript, which was copied by John Wylde in the middle years of the
fifteenth century to help him in his duties as precentor of Waltham Holy
Cross, produced results which are decidedly startling 18. They are con
firmed, however, by a similar re-reading of the treatise of Guilielmus
Monachus, which was copied in Northern Italy about a quarter of a
century later 19.
It is worth reprinting the few sentences from the Lansdowne Anony
mous, numbering them and providing a modern transliteration: ?

15 "Elisab. Faburden ...", 238.

16 "Das Ergebnis ... ", 187.
17 Op. cit., 151-4.
is British Museum, Lansdowne MS 763, ff. 116-116'. We shall use the modern
spelling of 'Faburden' except in quotation: the early spelling varies. For the sake
of convenience, we shall use 'Faburden' to denote the original English form, and
'Fauxbourdon5 when referring to the continental and later English practice of trans
posing the plainsong an octave in the upper voice. By the later fifteenth century,
neither English nor continental sources upheld this distinction, but it will prove
useful here.
19 "De praeceptis artis musicae et practicae compendiosus libellus", Cod. 336
MS Lat. 1581, Libr. of S. Marco, Venice, 1-48'; in E. de Coussemaker, Scriptorum
. .. Nova Series, III, 1879.

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 47

(1) The sight of ffaburdon with his The Sight of Faburden with his accords.
a cordis.

(2) for \>e leeste processe of sigtis na For the least process of Sights, natural and
tural and most in vse is expedient most in use, [it] is expedient to declare
to declare f>e sight of ffaburdun. the Sight of Faburden.
(3) The wheche ha}>e but 2? sightis. The which hath but two Sights: a third
a .3de. aboue J>e plain song in above the plainsong in Sight, the which is
sight })e wheche is a .6. fro \>e a sixth from the Treble in Voice; and an
Treble in voice, and a euyn wt even with the plainsong in Sight, the
t>e plain song in sight }>e wheche which is an octave from the Treble in
is a .8te. fro J)e Treble in voise. Voice.
(4) These 2? a cordis \>e ffaburde These two accords the Faburdener must
ner must rwle be f)e Men? of \>e rule by the Mean of the plainsong.
plain song.
(5) ffor whan he shal be gynne his For when he shall begin his Faburden,
ffaburdun he must attende to \>e he must attend to the plainsong, and set
plain song and sette his sight his Sight even with the plainsong and his
euyn wt J>e plain song, and his Voice in a fifth beneath the plainsong.
voice, in a 5te. benef>e \>e plain
song

(6) and aftir J)t wheJnY \>e plain And after that, whether the plainsong as
song ascende or descende to sette cend or descend, [he ought] to set his
his sih^t alwey bof>e in rwle and Sight always, both in rule and space, above
space a boue f>e plain song in a the plainsong in a third.
.3de.

(7) and aftir f>t {>e plain song haun And after that the plainsong haunteth his
tij> his course ey\>er in acutii course either in acutis from g solreut above
fro g solreut a boue to G solreut to G Solreut beneath, [he ought] to close
be ne^e to close dunward in downwards in Sight even upon the plain
sight euyn vpon J>e plain song, song upon one of these keys: D Lasolre,
vpon one of {?ese keyes Dlasolre. C Solfaut, A Lamire or G Solreut beneath.
Csolfaut Alamire or G solreut.
benethe

(8) And yf \>e plainsong haunt his And if the plainsong haunt his course
course fro Gsolreut be nethe doun from G Solreut beneath down toward A
toward Are. conuenientli JDan to Re, [he ought] conveniently then to see
se be fore where he may close wt. before where he may close, with two or
2?. or 3?. or 4e. 3dis be fore three or four thirds before, either in F
ey\>er in Effaut benej>e or Dsolre Faut beneath, or D Solre, or C Faut, or
or Cfaut or Are. A Re.

(9) And al f>ese closis gladli to be And all these closes [are] gladly to be
sunge and closid at J>e laste ende sung and closed at the last end of a word.
of a worde.

(10) And as of te as he wil to touche And as often as he will [he ought] to

J>e plain song and voide \>erixo touch the plainsong ? and void there

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 48 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

excepte twies to gedir for \>t may from ? except twice together, for that
not be. inas moche as Ipe plain may not be, inasmuch as the plainsong
song sight is a 8te. to J>e treble. Sight is an octave to the Treble and a
and a .5te. to \>e men? and so to fifth to the Mean, and so to every degree
he is a perfect chord; and two perfect
euery degr? he is a p^rfite corde.
and .2?. p^rfite a cordis of one accords of one nature may not be sung
natwre may not be sung to gedir together in no degree of Discant.
in no degre of Descant.

Riemann thought that Faburden was the same thing as English dis
cant; and so he had to emend the text with an abandon that would have
done credit to Procrustes, reading 'above' for 'below' and standing the whole
passage on its head 20. Bukofzer and Georgiades righteously scorned such
methods; but ironically enough, each of them fell into a similar trap on
the other side of the road. Both imagined that Faburden was the English
version of Fauxbourdon, and tried to interpret the paragraph accordingly;
and both made very heavy weather of the task. In view of the authority
which their readings have gained ? they have gone unchallenged for
over twenty years ? it will be necessary to quote their findings here.
Bukofzer's late summary in Fauxbourdon Revisited 21 usefully condenses
his own ideas and those of Georgiades. He reprimands our author in no
uncertain terms: ?
"The obscurity of the passage in question is due to the fact that the
English Anonymous has applied the practice of the transposing "sights",
a great convenience in English discant, to fauxbourdon also, where it
makes little sense and encumbers rather than facilitates improvised
performance. Even more disconcerting is the circumstance that the
Anonymous makes the essential point by implication only. He does not
state in so many words that in faburden the cantus firmus is sung an
octave above the original pitch of the plainsong and that the meane
doubles the line at the fifth above the original pitch... This funda
mental fact is tacitly assumed in what the Anonymous actually says...
The singer of the lowest voice constantly holds a sixth or octave below
the treble and a third or fifth below the middle part. Up to this point
the directions are clear, but then the author introduces the sights and
beclouds the issue. He goes on to say that the faburdener may visualise
his intervals by reading the unison or upper third of either the treble
or the meane. In the case of the treble the read note would sound an
octave below the sight; in the case of the meane, a fifth below. This
far-fetched manner of accounting for the tenor explains the puzzling
remark that the two sights of the faburden, the unison and the upper
third, apply to both the treble and the meane. In either case the
sighted notes sound below the read pitch in exact opposition to those
in English discant."

20 See H. Riemann, Musiklexikon (11th. ed., rev. A.Einstein), Berlin 1929,

I, 493-494, and further ref. there.
21 lb. 27-28.

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 49

In order to turn this description of Faburden into an improvised

equivalent of Fauxbourdon, Bukofzer has had to make the following cor
rections and amplifications: that the plainsong is tacitly assumed to be sung
an octave above its original pitch; that the Mean is tacitly assumed to
double the Treble at the lower fourth; that it would 'becloud the issue' to
describe continental Fauxbourdon in terms of the sights ? when it would
have been a perfectly simple matter to do so if the author had wished to;
and that the Anonymous states (in sentences (4) and (5)) that one and
the same Sight may be applied by the singer of the lowest voice to either of
two voices lying a fourth apart, neither of which is written on the paper in
front of him ? when the whole point of the Sights, as the very name
implies, was that the singer could transpose straight from the written plain
song.
Georgiades does not dwell on the obscurity of the passage as Bukofzer
does; but he too has to assume eine Ver?nderung der Auffassung der Ter
mini "in sight" und "in voice", and an implied transposition of the plain
song to the upper octave 22. These two points are vital to the meaning of
the passage as he understands it, and would certainly have been equally
vital to the unlettered singing-men of Waltham Holy Cross, for whom
John Wylde compiled and edited these vernacular treatises. Now the one
thing that we are entitled to assume is that Wylde found the instructions of
his anonymous source useful enough, and clear enough, to wish to copy
them into his musical vade me cum. Here is a fresh construe of what the
Anonymous says, and it contains no emendations or tacit assumptions at
all. The translation is in italics, and any comments are in ordinary type.
( 1 ) This is a description of the Faburden Sight and of the intervals
which it makes with the plainsong. The Faburden was the lowest voice,
as Bukofzer and Georgiades agree. The Sight, called sometimes the 'Imagi
nation', was the note visualised by the singer at a stated interval above or
below the plainsong which he had under his eyes; while visualising the
'sighted' note, he then sang a different note, again at some prescribed
interval above or below the sighted note. In short, it was a system of trans
position which enabled one or more parts to be improvised from a written
plainsong, whereby the imagined intervals of the Sight never went beyond
the lines and spaces of the four-lined plainsong staff. In more familiar
terms, a horn-player wishing to harmonise the note concert a' might visua
lise the upper third c in Sight, knowing that the sound actually produced by
his F-horn would be the fifth below, / in Voice ? a major third below
the concert a. The terms 'Sight' and 'Voice' are used with admirable
consistency in all the English treatises of the period, and there is no reason

22 Op. cit., 44.

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50 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

to suppose any change in their meaning for this one passage. Note finally
that our author does not promise any information about the third voice
of a Faburden-piece, though he does in fact give some.
(2) The technique of Faburden is the *least' [i.e. the simplest, or the
humblest] of the family of Sights, but as it is so natural and so common it
will be worth-while to explain it. The author makes no distinction between
the technique of the Sights, as applied to Faburden, and its application to
other forms of discant.
(3) The Faburden voice uses only two Sights, namely:

(i) the sighted or imagined third above the plainsong, which

sounds in Voice a sixth from [i.e. below] the Treble.
(ii) the sighted unison with the plainsong, which sounds in Voice
an octave below the Treble.

This is where both Bukofzer and Georgiades went astray. Each of them
assumed that the sighted third and unison actually sounded as a sung third
or unison ? in other words, that Sight and Voice were identical; and
since we are also told that the Faburden sounds in Voice a sixth or an
octave below the Treble, it was an easy step to assume that the Treble must
be singing the plainsong itself, transposed to the upper octave. But
Sight and Voice are not identical here, as we may see from (5) below.
Bukofzer and Georgiades got out of this corner by assuming: (i) that in
(3) the author omits to say that Sight and Voice are in unison, and (ii)
that in (5) he is referring to the Mean ? which they held to be the
plainsong transposed up a fifth ? as 'the plainsong'. As we shall find, there
is in fact no contradiction whatever between the two sentences. In (3), we
are not yet told what the interval between Sight and Voice is. The author
is quite logical: first he must explain the two Sights, and later on he will
say what transposition is to be used. Similarly, our horn-player must first
learn how to finger and blow the written notes in front of him before he
learns how to choose the correct crook for his instrument. We are however
informed that the sighted upper third and unison will sound a sixth and
an octave respectively below the Treble; but this is still a relative matter,
for we do not yet know the pitch of the Treble either.
(4) The Faburdener is to regulate the pitch of these two sighted notes
from the 'Mean of the plainsong'. Here the author states quite unequivo
cally that the plainsong is the Mean, or middle voice. This is the crucial
point, the vital distinction between Faburden and Fauxbourdon.
(5) When the Faburdener begins to sing, he should look at [the first
note of] the plainsong and imagine the unison with it in Sight; he should
then set his Voice a fifth below the plainsong. The interval of transposition
between Sight and Voice is therefore the lower fifth. Our horn-player

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 51

must select his F-crook. Now that we know the pitch of the Faburden, we
also know the pitch of the Treble. The Faburdener's sighted unison with
the plainsong sounds in Voice an octave below the Treble (3, ii) : it follows
that the Treble must be singing the fourth above the plainsong, for the
Faburdener has the fifth below.
(6) Thereafter, whether the plainsong rises or falls, the Faburdener
should always set his Sight on the line or space [of the staff] a third above
the plainsong. The upper third in Sight yields the fifth below in Voice (5) :
the resulting sounds will therefore lie a third below the plainsong. This
sighted upper third is also a sixth below the Treble in Voice (3, i) : here
too, then, the Treble must be singing the fourth above the plainsong. In
other words, the Treble doubles the plainsong Mean at the upper fourth
throughout.
(7) // the plainsong lies high, between g and g, the Faburdener
should cadence by moving his Sight down to a unison with the plainsong
on the notes d!, c, a or g 2S. He will thus end each phrase as he began it,
singing the fifth below in Voice at all cadences.
(8) // the plainsongs lies low, between g and a, the Faburdener should
if possible look ahead and see whether he may sing up to four thirds in
succession before cadencing [in Sight] on to f, d, c or a2S. As in (7), he
is to cadence with a sighted unison, sounding a fifth below the plainsong.
He is also recommended to sing up to four thirds in a row where possible,
presumably to enhance the cadence. Note that a cadence on to a plainsong
a will require the Faburdener to sing the D below Gamut ? an unusually
low note which could not be fitted into the hexachordal system except by
using the transposed Sights 24.
(9) All these cadences are to be sung quite freely on the last note of
any word [in the plainsong].
(10) As often as he likes, the Faburdener may touch the plainsong
[in Sight] and leave it [i.e. sing a sighted unison followed by a sighted
upper third], unless [he touches it] twice in succession. That is forbidden,
since the plainsong Sight [i.e. the unison between Sight and plainsong,
sounding a fifth lower in Voice] is an octave below the Treble and a fifth

23 Note the dislike of cadences on to b or e in the plainsong; these would yield

Phrygian cadences on to e and a (via ?>-flat) in the Faburden voice respectively.
In fact, the music of the time does not always bear this out.
24 These low notes beneath Gam Ut rarely occur in English music before the
Eton manuscript ? was transposition common? On the other hand, the English
Anonymous tells singers how to change the Sights when Countering in order to
plunge deep below the plainsong, "yf ye haue a low voice" (f.115'). And Binchois,
whose musical idiom is often indistinguishable from the style of his English contem
poraries^ frequently ventured below the Gam.

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52 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

below the Mean, and thus forms a perfect consonance with each of the
other parts; and two perfect consonances of the same kind may not be sung
in succession in any part of Discant. This is the usual prohibition of conse
cutive perfect fifths and octaves: two successive sighted unisons with the
plainsong will yield consecutive fifths between Faburden and plainsong
Mean, consecutive octaves between Faburden and Treble.
To sum up, here is a fresh definition of Faburden in modern terms:
? In a Faburden-piece, the plainsong lies in the middle voice or Mean.
Below it, the tenor or Faburdener improvises in fifths and thirds by imagi
ning unisons with or thirds above the written plainsong and pitching his
voice a fifth lower than the imagined notes. He should begin with a sung
fifth and move on in sung thirds, interposing fifths whenever he likes,
provided that he does not sing two in succession; at the end of a word in
the plainsong he should cadence by singing a fifth, preceded by as many as
four successive thirds if the plainsong lies low. Cadences are to be avoided
when the plainsong closes on b, e and their octaves. The Treble doubles
the plainsong Mean throughout at the fourth above.
This then was Faburden as John Wylde and his anonymous author
understood the term. The interpretation given above is the only possible
one, if we assume that author and copyist meant what they wrote. It is
now clear that Faburden must have grown straight out of the earlier prac
tices of English discant such as Countertenor, Countergymel and Counter.
The sudden introduction of continental Fauxbourdon, with its octave
transposition of the plainsong in the treble, would indeed have been some
thing of a novelty ? though not perhaps such a break in the tradition as
some writers have supposed 25. But the Sights of Countertenor and Coun
tergymel also described by the English Anonymous already suggest ways
in which an improvised voice may sing below the plainsong at times; and
the singer of the Counter Sight is told to keep his part beneath the plain
song throughout the entire piece 26. Nor was Counter a fifteenth-century in
vention, even. Pseudo-Tunstede (1351?) has a chapter on 'Discanting
beneath the Plainsong'. It ends thus: ". . . tarnen dummodo discantaveritis
sub piano cantu, nullus potest discantare supra, nisi fuerit expertus de gra
vium vocum sedibus, quia omnes superiores voces ad graviorem vocem
habent reddere concordiam . . ." 27.
These words give the clue as to how Faburden came into being.
The Sights which lay partly or wholly beneath the plainsong allowed the

25 Bukofzer, Geschichte..., 128, for example.

26 See note 24.
27 E. de Coussemaker, op. cit., IV, 294, Cap. XL, "Quomodo sub piano cantu
discantandum est". Here is Besseler's 'Bourdonkontratenor5 ? in the mid-fourteenth
century!

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 53

discanter much greater melodic and harmonic freedom than English dis
cant proper, which was firmly anchored to its plainsong bass. But they
lost in sonority what they gained in variety; for as Tunstede says, only an
expert could supply a third voice on top. Faburden was a neat, simple, and
inevitably popular answer to the problem: if the lowest voice kept to fifths
and thirds only beneath the plainsong, a third voice could then be added at
the fourth above it with no risk of collisions. The result would sound, super
ficially, like the familiar progressions of English discant. But the bass
would be more varied, and the techniques of the Treble and Faburden
voices were far simpler and could be picked up in one lesson. Hence it
must soon have become the most popular of the techniques of discant,
"the least process of Sights, natural and most in use".
The clinching proof, however, is the fact that the new interpretation
at last enables us to explain the name Faburden in a convincing way.
Von Ficker held that the solmisation syllable Fa here referred to the interval
of a fourth between the two upper voices, so that Fa-burden meant Burden
charaderised-by-the-fourth28. This will not do, for two reasons. First,
the Faburden is unquestionably the lowest voice, which has nothing to do
with any fourths. Second, Fa does not mean a fourth. It is the name of
the fourth degree of the hexachord; it does not stand for an interval, but
for the notes c, f, and b-flat. It was the most difficult syllable of the hexa
chord to handle, for the novice who was learning his solmisation ; and the
difficulty turned on the note b, which might be either b-fa or b-mi2d.
In Faburden, however, the singer of the lowest voice never sings a b-mi.
Every b sounded as a b-fa, including the low b-fa above Gamut which
Power does not even mention in his Treatise upon the Gam. The Faburde
ner can only sing a b in Voice by imagining the / a fifth above in Sight;
and f-fa will always yield b-fa. Note that the name must have been inven
ted by someone listening to the total effect from the outside, and not by

28 "Zur Sch?pfungsgeschichte...", 12If.; Flasdieck, "Elisab. Faburden...",

216ff. Besseler ("Das Ergebnis...") objects that the term Faburdon may not be
interpreted as the Guidonian Fa plus Burdon because there is no other example
in English where a com posit a is headed by a solmisation syllable. He even quotes
Flasdieck to his own purpose, neglecting to say that Flasdieck goes on to make
hay of this argument. There are plenty of noun-plus-noun compositae in English,
and technical jargon is full of unique word-coinings. No one would deny that the
Latin word 'solmisare', for example, was formed from Guido's hexachord-syllables,
simply because the formation is unique in Latin. Why, the original derivation of
these very syllables from the hymn Ut queant laxis was itself a unique proceeding!
29 See for example the amusing poem from the late fourteenth century which
Francis Lee Utley reprints as "The Choristers' Lament", in Speculum, XVI, 1946,
194ff. The wretched pupils speak of *J)at froward file. }}at men clipis fa', and one
says 'I fayle fast in J)e fa: it files al mi fare'.

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54 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

the Faburdener himself. When the Faburdener sees a plainsong g in front

of him, he is perfectly at liberty to imagine a third above it, b-mi in Sight
(unless there is a b-fa signature in the plainsong, of course), and the result
will be an e-mi in Voice. But for the outside listener, the absence of the
sung note b-mi in the Burden, or lowest voice, must have been a startling
novelty.
Another result of Faburdening a plainsong is ? to use modern
terms ? that the tonality of the music is shifted strongly to the area of the
subdominant: when the plainsong has its tonic, the Faburdener will be
singing the fifth below. Does this explain the marked preference for the
subdominant region which Besseler 30 has noted in English music of the
time? Some medieval writers speak of the flat hexachord as being pathetic
in character 31, and this may perhaps help to account for the puzzling
reference to cantus coronatus, scilicet ffaburdon, which occurs in an earlier
tract from the Wylde manuscript (f.58). The whole passage becomes much
clearer in the light of what Faburden really was: ?
Cantus Coronatus Cantus fradus dicitur et ad nullum gradum
alligatur sed potest ascender? et descender? in consonancijs
perf ecus et imperfedis indifferenter. Et Cantus naturalis coro
nari potest.
Cantus coronatus must be the plainsong itself, called Cantus fradus
because it has to be turned into measured music as a Mean for Faburde
ning; as a plainsong, it is obviously not one of the 'degrees' or parts of
English discant, nor is it to be accompanied in discant style; there is no
restriction on the number of imperfect consonances (thirds) or ? at this
date ? perfect (fifths) which it may form in conjunction with the Fabur
den voice beneath; and finally the plainsong, or cantus naturalis, may be
'crowned' with an upper fourth by the Treble. Bukofzer gave up this pas
sage in despair, though not without suggesting that it preceded the better
known description of Faburden later on in the manuscript by about forty
years32 ? a point of chronology which everyone seems to have missed.
Other references to Cantus coronatus are rare. De Grocheo's description
refers fancifully to Chant Royal 33. But Anonymus 2 particularly associates
falsa m?sica with cantinellis coronatis 34; he defines falsa m?sica as quando
locatur b molle vel b quadrum in loco non usitato ... Ubi ponitur b rotun
dum dicitur fa. Sometimes falsa m?sica is used out of necessity, and some

30 Bourdon und Fauxbourdon, 114.

31 See for example A. Pirro, Histoire de la musique..,., Paris 1940, 53.
32 Geschichte..., 70-71.
33 See the edition by J. Wolf, SIMG, I, 91.
34 See E. de Coussemaker, Op. cit., I, 312: cantus coronatus in the thirteenth
century!

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 55

times causa pulchritudinis, ut patet in cantinellis coronatis. This suits our

explanation very well, though the date is surprisingly early.
Finally, we should note that from the middle of the fourteenth century
up to the time of the Old Hall manuscript, the majority of plainsong
settings in English sources place the chant in the middle voice. Faburden,
as described by the English Anonymous, therefore grew up plumb in the
centre of the English tradition: there is no longer any call to assume that
the English exported the raw material of English discant to the continent,
in order to re-import it as the finished article, Fauxbourdon35. Before
moving on to this vexed question, though, it will be as well to search the
English sources for any evidence of Faburden that may have survived in
art music, and then to read Guilielmus Monachus and the Scottish Ano
nymous again 36, bearing in mind the early form of Faburden.

From its very nature, Faburden is unlikely to have left many traces
in the art-music of the time. As we have seen, it was the lowliest and easiest
of the Sight techniques, and neither needed nor merited the dignity of a
full realisation on expensive paper or parchment. There is a comparable
lack of plainsong-settings in true English discant style. The composers of
the time usually preferred the more adventurous methods of Countertenor,
Counter, and Countergymel, as Pseudo-Tunstede and Wylde's author de
scribed them; they would construct a two-part piece in this way, and then
add a third voice on top. Indeed the familiar sequences of Faburden and
English discant proper occur most frequently where the composer has not
used a plainsong, but has constructed a movement around a tenor or mean
of his own making 37. The obvious place to look for survivals of Faburden
is among unpretentious, functional music, such as the simple settings of
plainsong in the earlier layers of the Old Hall manuscript, or the carols.
Towards the end of the fifteenth century, we find also a few tenor-parts
labelled 'Faburden' and similar ones which are not; and finally there
are the musical examples of the Scottish Anonymous, which belong (like
the organ-settings of Faburdens) to the sixteenth century.
According to Bukofzer 38, there are fifty-seven 'conductus-style' mass
movements and antiphons in the Old Hall manuscript which are certainly
or probably based on plainsong. No fewer than thirty of these have the
chant in the middle voice throughout. Most of them, as we have said,
favour the subsidiary practices of Countertenor, Counter and Countergymel.

35 Besseler, "Das Ergebnis ...", 187.

36 'The Airt of Musick', British Museum, Add. MS 4911; for Faburden f.94ff.
37 See Aleyn's Gloria, for example (probably before 1373), in the Old Hall
MS, ff.5'-6, published in The Old Hall Manuscript, ?d. A. Ramsbotham, H. B.
Collins and Dom Anselm Hughes, 3 vols, Burnham and London 1933-38, I, 7-10.
38 In Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music, London 1951, 47-48.

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56 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

Some examples which are particularly close to Faburden, however, are the
following:
(1) Agnus Dei, f.105', Anonymous (III, 125-7) 39. Apart from the
opening unison and two octaves in the course of the piece, the tenor accom
panies the plainsong Mean (Sarum 8) on all strong beats with fifths and
thirds. The treble proceeds more freely: there is a parallel here with the
continental Fauxbourdons which also supply a contratenor sine Faux
bourdon as an alternative to the usual 'shadow' line at the fourth below the
treble; here the case is reversed, since the mean has the plainsong. The
many consecutive fifths suggest an early date for this piece; probably, like
our third example below, it hails from the late fourteenth century.
{2) [Mari]a [or Exsulta?] laude Genitrix, f.35', Anonymous (III,
51-53), last section. Except for two octaves, one on a weak beat, the tenor
again has fifths and thirds below the mean throughout. Bukofzer failed
to identify the apparent plainsong in the mean. Here too the treble is more
freely treated.
(3) Sanctus, f.87', Anonymous (III, 32-33). It is worth reprinting
this movement as an example, omitting the repeated Osanna, which is by
way of contrast built on a Countergymel. It can hardly be an accident that
the composer used these two distinct techniques to point the contrast of
structure. There are a few ornamental and unaccented passing-notes, but
otherwise the tenor and the plainsong mean proceed entirely in fifths and
thirds on all strong beats. The chant is again Sarum 8 ? may we detect
the hand of the same composer in this piece and in the Agnus Dei dis
cussed above? Here, the treble lightly ornaments the fourth above the
plainsong, except for six notes (bars 9, 11-12 and 18); at each of these
places the Faburden tenor has consecutive fifths with the mean, so that a
strict version of the treble would yield consecutive octaves with the former.
In most of the English music of this period we find far more consecutive
fifths than octaves, which were clearly disliked: here too the anonymous
composer was not ready to sacrifice his sensibility to a formal device.

Example 1

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 57

Similar examples may be found in the later Worcester Fragments 40,

the newly-discovered Fountains Abbey Museum manuscript41, and the
Fountains Fragment 42, to name only a few of the tattered sources which
survive.
Turning to the carols of the fifteenth century, we find more traces
of Faburden. Plainsong is surprisingly rare amongst the carols; but quite
often the composers alternate solo and chorus, repeating the solo line in a
three-part setting when the other voices enter. One outstanding example

40 See some of the pieces with the chant in the mean in these publications.
Dom Anselm Hughes, Worcester Mediaeval Harmony, Burnham, 1928, (e.g. nos.
12-13); Luther A. Dittmer, The Worcester Fragments, American Insitute of Musico
logy, 1957, nos. 82a (not printed), 85.
41 See "Fourteenth-century polyphony in a Fountains Abbey MS Book", by
H. K. Andrews and Thurston Dart, in Music and Letters, 39, January 1958, Iff.;
and Denis Stevens' useful comments in "The Second Fountains Fragment: a Post
script", Ib., April 1958, 148ff.
42 British Museum, Add. MS 4001 IB, described by Bukofzer in Studies...,
86ff. Since this article was written, Frank LI. Harrison's magnificent survey Music
in Medieval Britain (London, 1958) has appeared; the first complete examination of
pre-Reformation music in England, this rich volume is particularly excellent in
dealing with the liturgical aspects of medieval music. Ex. 19 (pp. 150-151) is a
late fourteenth-century setting of the hymn O lux beata Trinitas, from the MS
Sloane 1210 in the British Museum; Dr. Harrison gives it as an example of treble
cantus firmus, with the chant transposed an octave up ? but the mean corresponds
far more closely to the chant, transposed up a fifth.

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58 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

is Alleluia: A new work, from the Seiden manuscript, ff. 21'-22 (no.
30) 43. Here the upper voice of each two-part section (save the last) is
repeated at pitch by the middle voice of each succeeding three-part chorus,
while the other voices execute a Faburden round it. The scheme is of
course not mathematically exact: if it were, there would be no point in
writing it out. But apart from cadential suspensions and some ornamental
passing-notes, tenor and mean proceed throughout in fifths and thirds.
The single unison in bar 20 is the exception that proves the rule, though a
comparison with bars 7-8 would in fact tempt one to emend the note
in question. The treble keeps very close to its fourth above the mean. A
convenient example is this section of the Verse:
Ex. 2

8 .. .through might and grace of God-d?s sond, throughmight and grace of God d?s sond,

Te Deum, from the later Ritson manuscript, ff.26'-27 (no. 95) has a
special interest, for it is the only carol which bears the actual direction
'Faburden'. John Stevens, Bukofzer44 and Catherine Miller45 have
already discussed this carol. The Burden and Refrain carry the ornamented
plainsong Te Deum in the treble, transposed to the fourth above. The
Burden is followed by the words ffaburdon Te eternum without any
music. Dr. Stevens has supplied a second Burden by repeating the music
of Burden I and underlaying the new words, adding a mean in the style
of English discant. Another solution, proposed by Bukofzer, is to sing the
plainsong Te eternum in Fauxbourdon. Dr. Stevens feels that this makes
the carol into too much of a special case46: but the very direction
'ffaburdon' is unique among the carols, so that the piece appears to have
been a special case from the beginning. Bukofzer's suggestion makes some
sense of the word 'ffaburdon', and ensures that the verse Te eternum is
sung to the correct liturgical music. To sing the plainsong in Fauxbourdon,
however, means transposing the chant to the upper octave ? a fifth above
the ornamented version in the treble of Burden I, which has the plain
song transposed to the upper fourth. If the Te eternum is sung in Faburden

43 Reference is to Mediaeval Carols, ed. John Stevens, M?sica Britannica IV,

London 1952.
44 "Fauxbourdon Revisited", 32-33.
.45 In Renaissance News, iii, 63.
46 See editorial notes, op. cit.

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 59

though, as the scribe directed, we arrive at a much happier solution.

Since the plainsong will then lie at pitch in the mean, the treble will
carry it at the fourth above its original pitch; and this chimes in neatly
with the 'prepared' transposition of Burden I. An example will make this
clear: Ex 3

s ' - ? mus,

8 Te e - ter - num pa - trem om - n

In view of this use of Faburden in a

should we use Faburden in some of th
occur in the carols? See for example A
The monophonie carols (1A-10A) also
Turning now to sources from the la
centuries, we find a new phenomenon: s
of them actually marked * Faburden'
parts of Faburden-pieces ? Faburdens pr
unnecessary to write out Faburdens in f
stand at the end of the period of dev

47 Though I sing (9A) bears the strange h

Robbins reads this as 'Le bouldon', I scent
Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries, O
the MS confirmed Dr. Stevens' impeccabl
the tune.

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60 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

recognised for some time, and have been admirably described by Bukof
zer 48 and Denis Stevens 49. First we have the three litanies from Lambeth
438 (f.80'). Bukofzer suggested that they might be Faburdens, and Stevens
confirmed this, without however going further into the matter. Here are
the Faburdens, with the plainsongs supplied from ff. 121'-122' of the same
manuscript:

Feria 2 s *? lei - son,

Ky * n - e lei - son,Chri-ste

8 Chri - ste au - di

sKy-ri-e lei-son, Chri - ste lei-son,Chri - ste au - di

Faburden
Feria 3
Ky-ri-e lei-son, Chri - ste lei-son,Chri - ste au - di nos.

Mi se - re - re no - bis pi - e rex [do - mi - ne ] Je - su Chri - ste.

Mi - se - re - re no - bis pi - e rex do - mi - ne Je su Chri - ste.

48 Geschichte ..., 123; "Fauxbourdon Revisited", 31.

49 "Processional Psalms in Faburden", in M?sica Disciplina, IX, 1955, 105ff.

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 61

If we adjust the values of the plainsong notes here and there and add a
few cadential suspensions, as the Scottish Anonymous and Morley suggest,
the Faburdens fit very well. In the first, the plainsong has to be transposed
to the upper octave, as in Fauxbourdon. In the second it is kept at pitch,
but is treated as the treble: the Faburden sings octaves and sixths below it,
again as in Fauxbourdon. In the third litany, however, we have the
original method of Faburden: the plainsong proceeds in fifths and thirds
above the Faburden. Here then we have three different examples of the
later manner of Faburden. In the first two cases, the third part must be
supplied at the fourth below the plainsong; in the last, at the fourth above.
The style is severely functional, for these litanies were to be sung by three
clerks moving in procession, as the rubrics show. The superfluous b qua
draium in no. 2 is no doubt a warning that the part is not a true Faburden,
in which, as we have seen, every b had to be sung as Fa. The fc-flats which
are needed in no. 3 also involve the Faburdener in a few ?-flats. After the
Faburdens, and in the same hand, the name * William D?dy' ('Dundy') is
written.
Moving on to the processional psalms La?date pueri and In exitu
Israel, there is little to add to Mr. Stevens' perceptive remarks 50. Both
Faburdens ? which are not labelled as such in the manuscript ? imply
an octave transposition of the plainsong, as in Fauxbourdon. They are
decidedly more metrical than the Lambeth pieces, which do not fall
easily into regular bar-lengths, except perhaps for no. 2. La?date pueri is
in 0 throughout. In exitu Israel, a much longer psalm, is in 0 for six
verses (not counting the alternate plainsong verses), has a signature of
0 for the next four, and reverts to 0 for the last four. The Harley
psalms are unique in that they are a palimpsest: the plainsong notes have
been erased in a Sarum processional, and mensural notes substituted. Like
the Lambeth litanies, they are written on a four-lined staff: in this we may
still trace their ancestry as Sights derived from a written plainsong.
Finally, there is an unspecified Faburden in the Bodleian Library,
Digby 167 (f.31'), on a leaf which was printed in facsimile half a century
ago51. The Faburden is written out in a rare stroke notation: like the
other two tenor parts on the same page, it must have been copied for a
minstrel or some unlearned performer who could read the pitch of the note
on the staff, but had to work out its time-value by counting the number of

50 It is not clear from his article, though, that In exitu Israel appears on
ff. 67-70 of the MS (British Museum, Harley 2945).
51 In Early Bodleian Music, ed. J. Stainer, 2 vols, London 1901, I, pl.XCVIII
(facs.) and II, 181.
52 In "Changing Aspects of Mediaeval and Renaissance Music", in The
Musical Quarterly, 44, Jan. 1958, 16.

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 62 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

strokes. The music is underlaid with the words Eterne rex altissime et
redemptor; if the plainsong hymn is transposed to the upper octave in
Fauxbourdon style, the Digby tune fits beneath it note for note in octaves
and sixths. The two other pieces on the same folio are a tenor by one
'Frank', called Quene note, which is supplied with a florid treble; and
another called Anxci (Auxci?) bon youre delabonestren. Bukofzer identified
the latter as a Basse Dance, and thought that the former might also be
one, in the rhythm of the quaternaria 52. These are odd companions for a
plainsong hymn: all the other known Faburdens appear in service-books.
No doubt the tuneful office hymns with their repetitive metre were by far
the most 'popular' part of the liturgy; and this grouping of Faburden
and Basse Dance on the same leaf suggests that the improvisation of the
minstrels had something in common with the discant techniques of the
church musician 53.
All of these written Faburdens appear to have been copied in the early
sixteenth century, or perhaps in the last few years of the fifteenth. Now,
Wylde's manuscript was written in the middle of the fifteenth century,
while the earliest traces of Faburden in English art music occur in the first
layer of the Old Hall manuscript, by about 1400. These late examples
of Faburden therefore represent the last developments of a long tradition.
William Dundy's Faburden was not quite the same thing as John Wylde's,
and this will enable us to explain some of the puzzling remarks of
Guilielmus Monachus.
For one thing, Dundy's Faburden-tenors and others like them must
have been copied out for singers unacquainted with the original techniques
of Faburden: in order to turn these tenors into a polyphonic setting in
either Faburden or Fauxbourdon, the upper two parts have to be derived
from the lowest by using the Mean and Treble Sights of English discant,
and as a result, the plainsong will appear at the required pitch, in one of
the upper voices. Furthermore, Dundy understood by the term Faburden
three related but distinct techniques: Ex. 4 includes (a) the form which
we recognise as continental Fauxbourdon, with the plainsong transposed
to the upper octave in the treble, (b) a similar form which is found only

53 The collections of mensural tenor-parts in British Museum, Lansdowne MS

462 and the Vatican Lib., MS Reg. Lat. 1146 do not appear to contain any Fabur
dens. This is not so surprising, for these tenors, like those of the Bayeux MS, all
seem to have been lifted bodily from polyphonic pieces. (See concordances in Bukof
zer, Studies..., 38-41). The fact that one of the Lansdowne tenors appears in the
Old Hall MS as the lowest voice of an anonymous Sanctus (f.84'; ed. Ill, 20ff.), in
which the plainsong migrates between the Lansdowne tenor and the middle voice,
shows that the tenors were not all intended per se as counterpoints to plainsong.
My friends Dr. Hugh Baillie and Mr. Jeremy Noble are preparing a complete
study of these monophonie tenors.

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 63

in British sources, where the plainsong is sung at pitch in the treble and
accompanied beneath after the manner of Fauxbourdon, and (c) the
original form of Faburden as John Wylde described it. Of these techniques,
(a) was the most popular: four examples survive, while (b) and (c)
muster only one each 54. Setting aside for the moment the question of
how these forms developed, we shall now look again at what Guilielmus
Monachus and the Scottish Anonymous had to say on the subject of
Faburden and Fauxbourdon.

54 Dr. Harrison has unearthed several more Faburden-tenors, some monophonie

and some embedded in polyphonic pieces ? settings of Faburdens for voices which
foreshadow the later organ arrangements of Faburdens. There are four single Fabur
den-tenors to Rogation Kyrie litanies (cf. the Lambeth MS) in the Bodleian Lib.,
MS. Rawl. liturg. e. 45, ff.57'-58 and 59'-60' (not ff.57'-61', as stated in Music
in Medieval Britain, 411). They are all examples of Fauxbourdon, with the octave
transposition of the chant in the treble. The Pepys MS 1236 of Magdalene College,
Cambridge, contains a polyphonic setting of the Faburden to one of these Litanies
? not Fauxbourdon, since the chant fits in fifths and thirds at pitch above the
tenor (Harrison, op. cit., 410ff.). Ex. 140 (p. 356) gives the Faburden on which
Sheppard built his setting of the processional psalm La?date pueri (in the Gyffard
part-books, British Museum, Add. MS 17802-5): Dr. Harrison transposes the plain
song up a fourth as if it were a case of Fauxbourdon, but the chant fits at pitch in
Faburden. The anonymous setting of Alma chorus domini, also from the Gyffard
books (ex. 189, p. 393) is also based on Faburden: for the first two bars of the
example, the bass is the treble line of the Faburden transposed down an octave, for
the last two, it is the Faburden-tenor itself. All these settings are alternatim arrange
ments. This suggests another thought: several alternatim pieces quoted by Dr. Har
rison employ the chant transposed to the upper fourth (sometimes the lower fifth);
and some are, he implies, built on the Fauxbourdon of the chant similarly trans
posed, as is the La?date pueri of Sheppard already cited. Transposition to the fourth
above is not a regular practice in Fauxbourdon; but if a chant is Faburdened, then
the treble naturally sings the chant at the fourth above. Applying Occam's razor and
seeking the simpler solution, we ought therefore to assume that in any such alter
natim setting, the intervening choral verses were sung in true Faburden, not in 'Faux
bourdon- with- the-plainsong-transposed-to-the-upper-fourth': see for example the
processional prose Gloria laus (exx. 210-211, pp. 407f.), the processional antiphon
Collegerunt (p. 408, n. 3), the troped lesson Laudes Deo (ex. 198, pp. 400f.) ? all
from the Pepys MS ?, Sheppard's respond and prose Gaude, gaude, gaude Maria
(exx. 194ff., pp. 397ff.? from Oxford, Christ Church MSS 979-983), Ludford's
sequence Laetabundus (ex. 188, p. 392, from British Museum, Roy. App. 45-48).
By contrast, cases where Fauxbourdon (or Faburden transposed to the upper fifth)
have been used are: the anonymous hymn O lux beata Trinitas, from the Pepys MS
(ex. 177, p. 383) ? here again the mean is slightly more faithful to the chant, trans
posed to the fifth above ?, Banester's setting of the hymn Exsultet celum laudibus
from the same source (ex. 176, pp. 382f.) ? he uses Fauxbourdon ? and the
anonymous troped Kyrie Deus creator omnium from MS Archer 2 of the Shake
speare Birthplace Lib., Stratford-on-Avon (ex. 61, p. 278), which is a lightly stylised
Fauxbourdon. These examples alone show how lavish and detailed are Dr. Harrison's
musical illustrations.

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64 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

The treatise of Guilielmus has already provided a focus for some

dispute. Nothing is known of the author, save that his work dates from
the last third of the fifteenth century, and survives in a copy from that
period ? not the original ? made by a North Italian scribe. Bukofzer
has shown that Coussemaker's edition of the tract is incomplete and
faulty, and he gives better readings which we shall adopt here 55. Besseler,
Handschin and Bukofzer have disagreed over certain of Guilielmus' re
marks56; the gist of their complaints was that the author had described
under the title Faulxbourdon two or three different styles, only one of
which was true Fauxbourdon (by this they understood the continental
model) ? and that Guilielmus attributed this to the English school. Now
if we read Guilielmus with our new knowledge of Faburden in mind,
many of the 'difficulties' vanish. Indeed, he shows such an understanding
of late fifteenth-century Faburden that one can hardly help concluding
that he was English after all ? a view that has lately been out of favour.
He may perhaps have been the 'misser Gulielmo inglese', a chaplain
whom Bartholomeo di Fiandra engaged on behalf of the Duke of Ferrara
in Antwerp during the last third of the fifteenth century 57. Here are
some of the reasons for this unexpected conclusion.
Bukofzer has convincingly proved that in the chapter De Modis
Anglicorum, Guilielmus apparently describes English discant under the
incorrect title modus faulxbourdon 58. He explains there how to derive two
upper parts from a written tenor. The supranus is to imagine unisons
with and thirds below the tenor but should set his voice an octave higher,
so that he in fact sings octaves and sixths above the tenor, beginning and
ending each phrase with an octave: in other words, this is our old friend
the Treble Sight of English discant. The contra is to sing fifths and
thirds above the tenor, beginning and ending each phrase with a fifth,
without using the Sights. The musical examples make it quite clear that

55 Geschichte ..., 154ff.

56 Besseler, Bourdon ..., 105-8; J. Handschin, "Eine umstrittene Stelle bei
Guilielmus Monachus", in Kongressbericht Basel, 1949, 145ff.; Bukofzer, "Faux
bourdon Revisited", 43-46.
57 E. Motta, "Musici alla corte degli Sforza", in Archivio storico Lombardo,
series 2, LV, 1887, quotes the document from Van der Straeten, La musique aux Pays
Bas avant le XIXe. si?cle, (8 vols), Bruxelles, 1867-68, VI, 73. The letter is fifteenth
century, but undated. However, Duke Ercole I did not found his chapel until Dec.
1471, so that he would not have engaged a clerk in orders much before that date
(see L. F. Valdrighi, "Capelle> concerti e musiche di casa d'Est?", in Atti e memorie
delle RR. deputazioni di storia patria per le provincie modenesi, series III, vol. II,
Modena 1883, 415-495). In 1475 there were among the cantori a Bartolomeo Rai
mondo and a Guglielmo di Fiandra ? the only Guglielmo in the surviving records.
58 Coussemaker, op. cit., Ill, 288aff.; see n.56 for the comments of Bukofzer.

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 65

the result is English discant, if the tenor is a plainsong. But Guilielmus'

tenor is not a plainsong; nor does his text prescribe a plainsong tenor at
this point. He only talks about 'the tenor', and further says that he is
describing Faulxbourdon as practised by the English. Now, we have
already shown that Dundy, writing soon after Guilielmus, used the term
Faburden in the broadest sense and included Fauxbourdon under that
heading. Guilielmus, who wrote for the continental market, no doubt
used the current term Fauxbourdon in a similar way, and included Fabur
den in his definition. In short, there is no contradiction at all in his
chapter De Modis Anglicorum: he is merely describing the English practise
of realising a three-part Faburden-piece from a prepared Faburden-tenor
such as those we find in the Lambeth manuscript. We have shown above
that these tenors must be discanted in this way; the resulting piece may
be a true Faburden, a true Fauxbourdon, or a Fauxbourdon-at-pitch, but
the same method ? English discant ? holds good for each. Guilielmus,
it seems, was not such an ignoramus after all in this instance. How about
the rest of his treatise?
Guilielmus' next chapter dealing with Fauxbourdon is the Regulae
Contrapundi Anglicorum 59, and some writers have said that it flatly
contradicts what has gone before. It would be more charitable to assume
that Guilielmus did not set out to confuse and mislead his pupils. In the
earlier chapter he told how to reconstruct a complete Faburden-piece (in the
meaning of the later fifteenth century) from the written tenor-part. What
he now does is to describe Faburden-Fauxbourdon from another angle:
that of the singer who has in front of him not a prepared Faburden-tenor,
but the plainsong itself. He talks here for the first time of a cantus firmus.
Here is the gist of what he writes:
( 1 ) Fauxbourdon is a common English practice.
(2) It is sung with three voices, tenor, contratenor and supranus.
(3) If it is sung in the English manner, it should be assumed that the
supranus is the cantus firmus ? 'd?bet assumi supranum cantum firmum
[esse]' ? and the said cantus firmus should govern the supranus or
cantus; but this is to be understood in triple time, whether in mood, tempus
or prolation ? triple time, in contrast to the French manner, which
adopted duple time about 1430, as Besseler has pointed out 60; it is worth
noting here that triple time-signature in mood, time and prolation re
mained in use in English music until the sixteenth century. This again
shows that Guilielmus knew what he was talking about. In this sentence
he is clearly describing Fauxbourdon proper, with the cantus firmus in the
treble; he does not say that the plainsong is to be transposed up an

59 Coussemaker, op. cit., 292aff.

60 Besseler, ib. 106.

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 66 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

octave, but the succeeding example makes this clear (it is out of place,
as Handschin suggested: Bukofzer confirmed the fact); this must of
course be the reason for the curious phrasing of this passage, 'd?bet
assumi... d?bet regere supranum'.
(4) The first note of the cantus firmus should be doubled in length
? in order to allow the tenor to move up from the octave below to the
sixth, as in the example.
(5) // after the first two notes [of the cantus firmus] there should
follow two [successive] notes at the same pitch, the first of them should
make an ornamental transition leading up to the second from below
? 'prima d?bet facer? transitum sive passagium sub eodeum puncto et
sono'. This too is shown in the example.
(6) The last note should also be expanded to make a similar tran
sition ? to effect a cadence, as in the example.
(7) Fauxbourdon, then, is to be sung with three voices, keeping to
the stated rules, ? i.e. (3-6) above ?
'sed quando habeat supranus pro consonantiis primam, octavam et
reliquas sextas, et in fine concordiarum sit octava, hoc est habet sextas et
octavas pro consonantiis supra tenorem, contratenor vero d?bet tenere dic
tum modum suprani;
'sed quando habeat pro consonantiis tertiam et quintam altas, hoc
est primam, quintam, reliquias tertias, ultimus vero finis concordiarum sit
quinta, ut patet per exemplum'.
The force of this passage seems to have escaped the notice of earlier
writers. They took it that the second part of the quotation referred to the
contratenor, although the contratenor is not given in the example referred
to. Surely the parallel construction 'sed quando . . . vero . . . sed quando . . .
vero' and the use of the subjunctive mood imply a balanced contrast, with
'supranus' as the subject in each case. Otherwise Guilielmus could perfectly
well have begun the first part with 'supranus habet. . .' and the second
with 'contratenor habet. . .'. A translation should therefore run: ?
But when the supranus has [sc. 'if the supranus should have'] for
consonances first an octave and the rest sixths, with an octave at the end
? i.e. it has sixths and octaves as consonances above the tenor ? then
the contratenor should keep to the said manner of the supranus;
but when it [the supranus] has for consonances the upper third and
fifth ? i.e. first a fifth, the rest thirds ? then the last chord must be a
fifth, as it appears from the example.
First Guilielmus describes a Fauxbourdon-treble ; then a Faburden
mean in Wylde's manner. The example for the latter is missing, as is the
example for his next paragraph; nor does he describe how to add a third
part ? perhaps the first 'sed' in the passage quoted prepares the way

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 67

for the coming exception to the rule that Fauxbourdon is sung with three
voices. Final proof that our translation is right occurs eight paragraphs
further on, where the author describes how to add a contratenor bassus
beneath the tenor of a Fauxbourdon-piece. This can be done, says Guiliel
mus 'si Faulxbordon faciat supranum suum per sextas et octavas': an
alternative form is clearly implied, and indeed his rules do not hold good
for a Faburden-piece.
(8) It was this paragraph in particular which aroused dispute
between Besseler, Handschin and Bukofzer: 'However, the manner of
Fauxbourdon might be taken differently in our country, not by keeping
to the above rules, but by keeping the actual cantus firmus as it stands
(or 'is written'), and by keeping the same consonances stated above, in the
supranus as in the contratenor, with however the possibility of making
syncopations by sixths and fifths, the penultimate note being a sixth, and
the contratenor doing likewise, as it shall appear from the example'.
Bukofzer correctly held that 'proprium cantum firmum sicut stat' simply
means 'untransposed'; it would strain the Latin to say that 'sicut stat5
refers to absence of ornamentation or to a res fada, as Handschin and
Besseler respectively thought. Bukofzer goes on: 'the inserted paragraph is
actually a brief return to English discant, which Guilielmus describes more
fully at another place in the treatise' ? in other words, in the chapter
De Modis Anglicorum. Bukofzer accepted the view that Guilielmus was
either Italian or writing in Italy as an adopted continental: he therefore
had to explain the 'apud nos' in the passage under discussion by saying
that English discant was also practised on the continent. This is undeni
able: but why, in that case, should Guilielmus describe English discant
as an especially continental practice, contrasting it with 'English' Faux
bourdon? As we have found, he knew quite a lot about English music.
Assume that 'apud nos' is not a contrast, and that the writer was writing
this chapter from the point of view of an Englishman writing for conti
nentals ? his title for this passage is after all Regulae Contrapundi Angli
corum ? and the final piece of the puzzle falls into place. Guilielmus,
whom we may now call William the Monk, is here explaining the specifi
cally British practice ('apud nos') of Fauxbourdon with the plainsong at
pitch in the upper voice and the lowest voices proceeding at the usual
intervals below it 61. The second of the Lambeth litanies provides an
example ; and the practice is also demonstrated by the Scottish Anonymous.
61 Guilielmus' remarks about the supranus making syncopations with sixths
and fifths, and the contratenor doing likewise, can hardly refer to the example of
syncopation at the end of the treatise, as Handschin and Bukofzer suggest ? even
though the example is written in the Treble Sight of English discant. If the contra
tenor is there supplied at the fourth below the upper voice, the result is a cacopho
nous sequence of accented seconds, when the tenor is ascending; when the tenor

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68 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

From all this we can see that Guilielmus, writing towards the end
of the fifteenth century, had a clear idea of what the terms Faburden and
Fauxbourdon then implied. He used the French word, presumably because
his audience was continental, just as Dundy used the English word in
England. Whatever the name, by this date Faburden and Fauxbourdon
were regarded as much the same thing. Guilielmus also knew the insular
practice of Fauxbourdon-at-pitch. All in all, we may probably assume
that he was an English monk who, like Hothby and the mysterious Rober
tas Anglicus 62, made Italy his home for a time. Since, as we have shown,
he was in fact well informed about Faburden and Fauxbourdon in English
music ? he does not so much as mention any French or Burgundian
contribution ? his insistence that England was the home of the technique
can no longer be disregarded. He is an important witness, if we hear him
without prejudice.
The treatise of the Scottish Anonymous stands right at the end of the
history of Faburden. Bukofzer and Georgiades accepted the dating 'after
1517' ? the writer quotes Ornithoparcus. Neither seems to have noticed
that there is a date included in the long chapter dealing with Faburden.
In a discussion of the Magnificat tones 63, the writer says: 'Of the quhilk
aucht townis the choristers ar all expert and dayly dois vss ?>e samy in
kirks of god throcht all christianytie Except l>e reallm of Scottland send t>e
3eir of god ane thouwsand fyvehundret fyvftie and aucht 3eir'. Later than
1558, then ? surprising proof of the tenacity of Faburden.
There is no need to dwell on what the Scottish Anonymous has to
say: Bukofzer and Georgiades sum up his clear (though longwinded) direc
tions very well 64. He does not describe the original form of Faburden,
but discusses everything from the viewpoint of Fauxbourdon. He also
explains several hybrid forms like the Fauxbourdon with contratenor bassus
that we find in Guilielmus' work. It is interesting to look through his
musical examples, though: no less than six out of the eighteen preserve

falls, the effect is a more pleasing succession of 7/4 chords revolving on to 6/3 chords.
The example is merely an illustration of the paragraph before, "Regulae circa
cognitionem syncoparum", which deals with syncopation in two voices, not three.
Guilielmus has used Treble Sight here as a useful way of getting both voices on to
the same staff by writing the upper part an octave lower. He describes this practice
earlier on (Coussemaker, op. cit. 291a): 'Nota quod ad habendam perfectam per
fectionem consonantiarum acutarum, nota quod unisonus accipitur pro octava'. The
fact that he naturally uses Treble Sight in this way also hints that he is probably
English.
62 See H. Davey, History of English Music (2nd. ed.), London 1921, 56. Fr. X.
Haberl ("Die r?mische "Schola Cantorum" und die p?pstlichen Kapells?nger bis
zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts", in Vierteljahrsschrift f?r Musikwissenschaft, 1887,
III, 189-296) records a Robertus Anglicus in 1485 as papal singer, and a Robertas
de Anglia in 1492. This cannot have been Robert Morton as Davey suggests, for

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 69

the plainsong at pitch in the middle part, although he does not usually
bother to write out the mean himself. Here is an example where he
does:
Ex. 5

Counter

Tenor

ul - ta-vit spi - ri -tus me

*)MS semibreve

He has turned the plainsong into triple measure, ignored the ligatures,
and added an extra bar at the end. Otherwise this setting of the seventh
tone (ff.l01'-2) could have furnished an example for John Wylde's manu
script. Note the written ?-flats in the outer parts only, and the cautionary
b-quadratum in the Counter. There can be little doubt that these examples
with the plainsong at pitch in the middle part, which include a litany
(f.96'), Te Deum (f.98) and Sanctus (f.98), are traditional survivals from
the older form of the previous century ? though the writer himself de
scribes them only from the point of view of the treble, which is, he says,
transposed to the fourth above instead of to the octave. One setting pre
serves the plainsong at its original pitch in the treble, Salvator mundi
(f.97). Here again, as in the similar Lambeth litany (no. 2), there is an
unnecessary b-quadratum in the tenor part, warning the singer that the b
is not to be sung as Fa.
There is one other sixteenth-century source which might possibly

he died in 1475 (see J. Marix, Histoire de la Musique et des Musiciens de la Cour

de Bourgogne..., Strasbourg 1939, 210). Nor can Morton have been the (same?)
Robertus de Anglia who was earlier on magister cantus in S. Petronio, Bologna, from
1467-72 (see G. Gaspari, "Ragguagli sulla capella musicale della Basilica di S.
Petronio in Bologna", in Atti e memorie della deputazione storica in Romagna,
Bologna 1868, Anno 7, 184-195; and Id., "La m?sica in S. Petronio ...", lb. 1870,
Anno 9, 1-35). No doubt Ramis de Pareia came across a treatise by Robertus when
he arrived in Bologna, for he berated this apparently rather old-fashioned English
man in his M?sica Practica (1482), over a question of time-signatures. See the
edition by J. Wolf in Publikationen der I.M.G., Beihefte II, Leipzig, 1901, 71.
Mr Thurston Dart, who has greatly improved this article by his suggestions, puts
forward Robert Wydow as a likely candidate ? he is said to have travelled, but
no-one knows where.
63 British Museum, Add. 4911, f. 102'.
64 Bukofzer, Geschichte ..., 85ff.; Georgiades, Englische Diskanttraktate . ..,
95ff.

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 70 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

yield further evidence: the many English organ pieces which are arrange
ments of Faburdens ? usually Faburdens to plainsong hymns. Since how
ever the normal plainsong-settings in the Mulliner Book, for example,
tend to transpose the chant fairly freely, this line of enquiry would probably
not take us much further: if the plainsongs were sometimes transposed,
then their Faburdens were probably treated in the same way, so that we
cannot safely deduce which type of Faburden was used ? whether
Faburden proper, Fauxbourdon, or Fauxbourdon at pitch. One example
discussed by Bukofzer is Redford's O Lux on the Faburden 65. Here the
plainsong would fit at its original pitch in octaves and sixths above the
Faburden, which is the bass of Redford's setting. In this particular piece
we may also trace the chant, highly ornamented and transposed down a
fourth, in almost every bar of the middle part; this is almost certainly a
coincidence. All these Faburden-settings for organ appear to have been
used for alternatim performance: presumably then, the other (choral)
verses must have been sung in Faburden. In a normal alternatim setting
of plainsong, the chant itself would be present throughout; here, the
Faburden has usurped its place, so that the plainsong is heard only in the
choral verses. These pre-Reformation organ pieces show how popular
Faburden had become66. Even Morley (1597) mentions the practice
? admittedly with a rather highbrow sneer 67.

The above is a first sketch for a new history of Faburden over two
hundred years of English music, and much will have to be done before
it is varnished and framed. One point still needs further research: Besseler's

65 "Fauxbourdon Revisited", 30; the piece is easily accessible (with one or

two other Faburden-settings) in Denis Stevens' edition, The Mulliner Book, (M?sica
Britannica I), London 1951, 23f.
66 For further examples see H. Miller's examination of the collection in British
Museum, Add. MS 29996, ff. 158-178' ? which has approving comments from
Thomas Tomkins in the seventeenth century! ? in The Musical Quarterly, XXVI,
Jan. 1940, 50ff.; some corrections in Bukofzer, op. cit. Dr. Harrison quotes some
further cases; Avery Burton's organ setting of Te Deum (alternatim), for example
(op. cit., ex. 187, pp. 390-391). Te Deum was regularly set in Faburden like this; the
two surviving choral settings of Te Deum, one by Taverner and one anonymous,
also have the unusual transposition of Burton's piece ? down one tone. Taverner's
arrangement uses the chant itself; the anonymous setting, like Burton's, uses either
the Fauxbourdon bass (chant transposed a tone below pitch in the treble) or the Fa
burden (chant transposed down a fifth in the mean). Probably the former; these are
two possible ways of describing the same result. Either would help to explain the
further transposition which invariably takes place in both organ and choral arrange
ments at w. 21 and 22 ? the music moves down another fourth, right through to the
end of the piece (op. cit., 388-390).
67 Thomas Morley, ?d. R. A. Harman, A Plain and Easy Introduction to Prac
tical Music London 1952, 206f.; note that his example implies Fauxbourdon-at-pitch.

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 71

contention that Fauxbourdon was invented and named by Dufay in 1427,

and that the English then took up the practice as a technique of improvi
sation 68. We have seen that the original form of Faburden developed
quite naturally from a fusion of extemporised discant and the English
preference for placing the chant in the middle voice; and there are traces
of Faburden in English musical sources from about 1400, if not earlier.
Faburden could not have developed from Fauxbourdon, then, since the
earliest evidence for the latter occurs only in the late 1420s. Hitherto, the
earliest known reference to the word 'Faburden' in English sources has
been a Durham indenture of 1447. However, it is an easy matter to assign
a date to the letter which Richard Cliffe, second vicar-prebendal of Heming
brough College, wrote to his superior, the Prior of Durham 69. Cliffe held
his post from 1427 to 1460, so that no-one has been able to use his undated
letter as exact evidence. But he informs the Prior that "a felay of ouris,
Sir John Rocliff, ye fifte vicare, has forsakyne his vicary, and is institute and
inducte in a perpetuall chauntery at Hull'. And he goes on to request that
the vacant post should be given to an unnamed acquaintance of his, now
"at Lichfelde, in ye college, in abitte", who is "als we her say, of connyng
sufficiante in redynge and sigynge [singing] of plane sange and te synge
a tribull til faburdun, als I have harde ye ahilaste men of our kirke say
and record? of hyme". I have found no record of Sir John Rocliff in
Hull; but turning to another page of Thomas Burton's book, we find
some useful lists of the vicars-prebendal of Hemingbrough. 'John Rowcliff
was presented to his post on the 25th of April 1427 and installed on the
20th of November. The date of his departure for Hull is not given; but
one William Watkinson, no doubt Cliffe's worthy friend, was duly presen
ted to Rowcliff s post on the 27th of November, 1432. The letter was
therefore written between 1427 and 1432, probably towards the end of
the period. The term Faburden, then, was current by 1432 in Heming
brough (Yorks.), Durham and Lichfield, all of them provincial towns
remote from such musical centres as London and Windsor; so it must have
been coined at least ten years before ? about 1420 or earlier, in fact.
Indeed, Cliffe's letter rather suggests that any vicar-prebendal in any
college was expected to be able to sing a treble to a Faburden-piece: if this
was the case, we are probably justified in pushing the date much further
back. No doubt churchmen resisted innovation then as they do today, taken
by and large. Note that Cliffe refers to the original form of Faburden:

68 Summed up in t(Das Ergebnis ...", op. cit.

69 Printed by Thomas Burton in his The History and Antiquities of the
Parish of Hemingbrough in the Country of York (ed. and enlarged by James Raine),
Yorks, Arch. Soc. Extra Series, No. 1, York 1888, Document XIII; for Cliffe and
Rocliff, pp. 82-3; for 'ye' read '?e', no doubt.

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72 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

his candidate can read and sing plainsong, and sing a treble to the
Faburden.
The evidence of date confirms the evidence of style, therefore: Fabur
den preceded Fauxbourdon. Dufay did not 'overtrump' English discant,
as Besseler maintained: he was content to follow suit. (It would really be
better to abandon this metaphor: great composers do not usually wrangle
for precedence or count their tricks in this way). The question remains:
who first had the idea of altering the original form of Faburden, so that
the plainsong lay in the top voice instead of in the mean? Since England
was the birthplace of the first Faburden, it seems only logical to assume
that the sister-technique of Fauxbourdon was also born (though not
named) on this side of the Channel; it would have travelled to the conti
nent as a technique of improvisation, to be adopted by Dufay and others
as the form that we find in the sources, partly art-music and partly
extemporisation. The continental type first appears in the late 1420s:
what relation does it bear to true Faburden?
If the English had already taken the step of transferring the plainsong
to the treble voice by this date, the answer is simple enough. All that the
continental composers had to do was to 'fix' the improvisation on paper
by writing down the essentials. If the English were still using true Fabur
den exclusively, there are two possibilities. Either the continentals misheard
the English treble line as the plainsong itself ? an easy mistake for
listeners reared on the French-Burgundian chanson, particularly if the
English coloured the treble with additional ornament ; or else Dufay or one
of his contemporaries hit on the idea of shifting the chant to the treble.
Which answer is the most likely?
The first, on the face of it. Besseler has raised the objections however
that the use of the chant in the treble was almost unknown in English music
before about 1430, and that the chanson style, with the main musical
interest lying in the decorated upper voice, was also unfamiliar to English
composers before that date 70. Certainly, treble cantus firmus was not
common in English music until the 1420s: but it was by no means un
heard-of. The first known use of chant in the treble is of English origin,
as Bukofzer has shown 71, and there are similar pieces to be found in
fourteenth-century English music which are undoubtedly older than the
Apt hymns72. There are eight (perhaps nine) examples in the Old Hall
70 See n. 68.
71 The setting of Sanctus in Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, MS. 334,
ff.1-1'; see Bukofzer, Geschichte..., 115.
72 For example, the setting of the hymn Gloria laus et honor in Dittmer, op.
cit., 16If.; such pieces are rare, but then so are the sources ? it is enough that the
habit persisted, and was developed in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth
centuries by the Old Hall composers.

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 73

manuscript, one (or two) by William or John Excetre: the former's career
can be traced back to 1384 73, the latter's right back to the reign of
Edward III 74. Three later examples by Leonel Power and Oliver clearly
foreshadow the methods of Dunstable 75. All these pieces occur in the ear
liest layer of the source, which was probably copied when Dufay was still
in his teens. Furthermore, these settings are part of a continuous tradition,
while the Apt hymns appear to have been an isolated experiment, and a
clumsy one at that. By Dunstable's time, mean cantus firmus was almost
unknown, for there is only one example in his entire surviving output:
apart from his isorhythmic masses and motets, which do not concern
us here, there are two cases of tenor cantus firmus, one with the chant in
the mean, and five where Dunstable decorates the plainsong in the
treble 76. The same proportions hold good for the later works of Leonel
Power, and for those of Dunstable's contemporaries ? and Dunstable
(d. 1453) and Power (d. 1445) belong to the generation before Dufay
(d. 1474). The habit of placing the chant in the treble is at least as
English as it is continental.
Chanson style, in which the lower voices are subdued to throw the
finely-drawn, decorated treble into greater relief, was also well enough
known to English composers of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth
centuries. Bukofzer quotes one tract which deals with fourteenth-century
music, though it is written in a fifteenth-century hand: whoever wants to
compose a ballade, rondeau, virelai, or psalm, says the anonymous writer,
'fiat primo discantus' 77. The anonymous authors of the Quatuor princi
palia musicae (1351?), describing a rudimentary form of English discant,
say of the singers of the upper parts: 'frangere debent et florere notas prout
magis decet' 78. They even have a chapter which tells how the sacrosanct
tenor itself may be ornamented in this way. There is very little secular
music surviving in English sources of the period, admittedly, but we must
allow for the wholesale destruction of manuscripts that has blighted our

73 See my article "Heinrich IV", in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart,

ed. F. Blume, VI, 1957, 62.
74 See my article, "A fourteenth-century ceremonial motet and its composer",
in Acta Musicologica, 29, 1957, 65ff.
75 For Power, see the edition, op. cit., Ill, 66ff.; for Oliver, ib., 8Iff. and 86ff.
76 See Bukofzer's edition, John Dunstable, Complete Works, (M?sica Britannica
VIII), London 1953.
77 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 410, pt. II, ff.7'-8; quoted in
Bukofzer, "Fauxbourdon Revisited", 38. Dr. Harrison cites a fourteenth-century
example of ornamental treble in a Magnificat from the Bodleian Lib., MS Lat.
Th. e. 30 (op. cit., ex. 126, p. 346); cases could be multiplied.
78 Coussemaker, op. cit., IV, 294-5.

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 74 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

knowledge of fourteenth-century English music for so long 79. Chaucer

wrote at least one roundel to music by a French composer 80. An important
Machaut manuscript was for a time in English possession 81. And finally,
the music of the Old Hall manuscript shows that the English had thor
oughly absorbed chanson style 82. The source even contains music by
Mayshuet (Mayhuet de Joan or Matheus de Sancto Johanne), a French
composer of the late ars nova, and the opening of a Gloria by Antonio
Zachara da Teramo, a late Trecento composer who has left us a Gloria
anglicana elsewhere. By the time of Power and Dunstable, every English
composer used chanson style almost all the time, with or without a plain
song in the treble; and since there are English works in this style in the
same source that contains the earliest Fauxbourdons by continental com
posers 83, it is clear that the English had made this language their own
before the advent of Fauxbourdon on the continent. A later witness, Martin
le Franc, after praising the English for their 'frisque concordance', goes
on to single out their melodic style for special mention 84: 'en fainte en
pause et en muance' ? these are all melodic terms. The pupils were now
teaching their masters.
The English, then, were quite capable of developing Fauxbourdon
from Faburden without further assistance from the continent. The change
from mean to treble cantus firmus probably took place about the middle
of Power's lifetime, before English music started to appear in continental
sources: by then the composer's interest had shifted from the mean to the
treble. One interesting example is the carol Abide, I hope it be the best 85,
which occurs both in the Seiden Manuscript, dating from about 1450,
and in the Trinity Roll, which in spite of its void notation is probably
some twenty years older. (The well-known Agincourt carol, Deo gracias,
Anglia, which must have been written within a decade of the battle
(1415), appears in the Trinity Roll with a prolation time-signature, but
in the Seiden manuscript in the later fashion of tempus perfedum). Abide,
I hope ... is the only carol in the older source written in tempus per

79 My friends Mr. Denis Stevens and Mr. Jeremy Noble are preparing a long
needed study and edition of English fourteenth-century mass-music ? fragments
and all.
80 "The note, I trowe, maked was in France" (Parlement of Foules, 1.677).
81 Paris, Bib. Nat., MS fr?. 9221; the Duke of Clarence had it of the Duke of
Berry in 1412. It was later returned, apparently. (F. Ludwig (ed.), G. de Machaut
Musikalische Werke, II, Einleitung, Leipzig 1928, p. 11*, note 1).
82 See Bukofzer, Studies ..., 54ff.
83 Bologna, Conservatorio di M?sica G-B. Martini (olim Liceo Musicale), MS
Q 15.
84 Dr. Harrison gives the passage in full (op. cit., 250).
85 John Stevens, ed., op. cit., nos. 10 and 42.

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 75

fee turn. The burdens show the strong influence of Faburden. Burden I, a
solo, is repeated at pitch as the mean of Burden II; there are two accented
unisons between tenor and mean, but otherwise the outer voices are very
close to Faburden. In the later version, though, Burden II has been trans
posed down a fourth in its entirety: the result is that Burden I now
appears at pitch in the top voice, doubled fairly closely by the mean at the
fourth below. In short, what was a stylised Faburden has now become a
stylised Fauxbourdon-at-pitch. Was the scribe who edited this carol deli
berately bringing it up to date? It is dangerous to proceed too much by
inferences; but I hope to have shown that there is no reason why the
English should not have developed Fauxbourdon themselves, and every
reason why they should. Dunstable's music is full of Fauxbourdon-like
passages in chanson style. The psalmodie Magnificat is a fine example of
stylised Fauxbourdon, with the plainsong transposed to the upper octave 86.
The other plainsong arrangements with the chant in the treble are not
psalmodie and are therefore far more elaborate, though passages like the
following, from Regina cell le tare 87, are common enough (the plainsong
notes are asterisked):

8 Al-le lu - - - - - [ya]

It seems reasonable enough to supp

den, grew from English stock on En
hypothesis do the early continental Fau
Dufay invented and named Fauxbo
secuti estis, part of his Missa Sandi
written for Robert Auclou, Dufay's
of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, Paris, d
when Dufay would have heard Englis
in the retinue of John, Duke of Bedfo
Clercx has shown that both Dufay an
Bologna throughout the period in q
Dufay's communion is a very early F

86 Bukofzer, ed. John Dunstable ..., no. 3

87 Bologna MS (see n. 83), ff.276'-277.
88 "Das Ergebnis ... ", op. cit.
89 Op. cit., 160ff.

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 76 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

into the Bologna manuscript, and the only one which has a Latin canon
explaining how the missing contra is to be supplied. (Too much has
been made of this canon, perhaps: if Fauxbourdon needed an explanatory
note of this kind, it is only natural that it should be supplied for the first
piece in the manuscript and not for the rest). Bukofzer was not prepared
to accept outright that Vos qui secuti estis was the first Fauxbourdon 90.
He pointed out that Limburgia and Binchois had equal claims of seniority;
and he showed that one piece by Binchois, Ut queant Iaxis 91, which
appears in a source only slightly younger than the Bologna manuscript,
is unique in its own way, just as Dufay's communion is, with its Latin tag.
Ut queant Iaxis, 'an altogether unprecedented kind of fauxbourdon', con
sists of two voices with a third to be supplied, like any normal Faux
bourdon, but with this difference: the written voices are not tenor and
discantus, but tenor and contra ? the upper voice must be supplied at
the fourth above the contra. The tenor moves in fifths and thirds beneath
the given contra, which has the plainsong transposed to the upper fifth.
The supplied discantus will come out at the octave above the original
pitch of the plainsong, and the piece will sound just like any other Faux
bourdon in performance. Nevertheless, this unusual way of writing the
music down clearly shows that Binchois' hymn-setting had its precedent
after all: in the original form of English Faburden. Plainsong (admittedly
transposed) in the mean, tenor in fifths and thirds beneath it, upper voice
to be supplied at the fourth above the mean ? this is far too close to
the directions of John Wylde's manuscript for any coincidence. Ut queant
laxis may even help to explain how change from Faburden to Faux
bourdon came about: many plainsongs lie rather low to be Faburdened
as they stand. The fairly common transposition of the chant to the upper
fifth in the mean would of course yield the chant at the upper octave in
the treble, a fourth above the mean 92.
Judging from his recorded career, Binchois is a far stronger candi
date than Dufay for the honour of having transmitted Faburden to the
continent. In 1424 he was in the service of that sensitive and tragic figure,
William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk; he may even have visited the Earl's
country seat at Ampthill in Bedfordshire, not ten miles from the town of

90 "Fauxbourdon Revisited", 34.

91 Venice, S. Marco Lib. MS it. IX, 145, f.25; published in J. Marix, Les
musiciens de la cour de Bourgogne au XVe si?cle, Paris 1937, 226.
92 There are compositions by other continental masters which transpose the
plainsong up a fifth when it forms the mean, including two of Dufay's hymn
settings ? both show strong influence of Faburden (see G. Dufay, S?mtliche
Hymnen, ed. R. Gerber, Das Chorwerk, 49, nos. 5 and 17, Audi b?nigne conditor
and Christe redemptor omnium.

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 FABURDEN AND FAUXBOURDON 77

Dunstable 93. Dufay, on the other hand, cannot be shown to have had
any personal contact with the English at all. Binchois' compositions, too,
often have a decidedly English cast of countenance, so much so that even
fifteenth-century scribes were hard put to it to distinguish between his
works and those of English masters of the time 94. Several of his plainsong
settings are also unique in that they are unomamented, 'purely mechanical'
Fauxbourdons with all three parts written out in full 95. They are far
closer in style to realisations of the much later English Faburden-tenors,
than to the Fauxbourdons of Dufay and his contemporaries. In short, they
are probably an attempt to put on paper the simple, functional Faburdens
or Fauxbourdons which the composer must have heard improvised by
English choirmen. It may have been Dufay who invented the French
name96 and the characteristic short-hand of the written two-voiced
Fauxbourdon, and who popularised the form in Italy; Binchois does not
seem to have crossed the Alps himself. But all in all, Dufay can no longer
be claimed as the sole inventor, let alone the transmitter, of Fauxbourdon.
It is far safer to draw conclusions from fifteenth-century theorists and
from the music that they discussed, than to build up hypotheses about an
improbable meeting between Dufay, speaking French in Walloon dialect,
and Dunstable, speaking Anglo-Norman French after the school of Strat
ford-atte-Bow with a Bedfordshire accent.
A final word: this sort of discovery, which upsets an apparent 'fact'
of musical history 97, cannot be dealt with fully in the few pages which
this article occupies. There are many more hares to be chased before this
question is finally settled. A point which needs more investigation, for
example, is the link between Faburden-Fauxbourdon and the rare conti

93 Marix, Histoire ..., op. cit., 177ff.

94 See my paper, "Some English Contemporaries of Dunstable", in Pro
ceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 81, 1955, 82-3.
95 See Besseler, Bourdon und Fauxbourdon, 162.
96 Mr. Thurston Dart convincingly suggests that the 'Faux' of 'Fauxbourdon'
may have referred to the use of falsetto for the octave transposition. Since, as we
have shown, Fauxbourdon must have developed from true Faburden, the word may
also refer to the 'feigning' of the English sights, which would probably have puzzled
the continental masters. If however they understood the original form of Faburden,
with ?-flats in the lowest voice instead of the accustomed fr-naturals, there is no
reason why 'Fauxbourdon' should not be taken as a more or less literal translation
of the English term: the fc-flats involve 'falsa m?sica' in the Burden. There are no
known examples of true Faburden in continental sources, on the other hand.
97 It is only fair to point out that Otto Ursprung correctly described Faburden
as long ago as 1931! See his Katholische Kirchenmusik, in Handbuch der Musik
wissenschaft, ed. B?cken, Potsdam 1931, 142. He does not seem to have realised the
implications of what he was saying, nor did he have the reprints of Bukofzer,
Georgiades and Meech to help him. But inspired guess or no, he was quite right.

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 78 M?SICA DISCIPLINA

nental plainsong-settings which place the chant in the middle voice 98. But
when all is said and done, Faburden and Fauxbourdon were modest, un
spectacular music, carefully restricted to a few humble occasions in the
framework of the liturgy. Because composers used these forms for such
simple and unpretentious functions, ? office hymns, Te Deum, Magni
ficat, psalmody and so forth ? the music itself was likewise reduced to
its barest essentials. As a result, Faburden and Fauxbourdon present in a
particularly clear form one of the great changes underlying Renaissance
music: the urge towards controlled dissonance, towards the rhythmically
disciplined harmony of the sixteenth century. Their real importance has
been too much exaggerated by recent controversies, and it is time that
we saw them in their own humble setting once more. They are a symptom,
not a cause ".

Birmingham, England

98 See n. 92. Also Dufay's Whitsuntide sequence Veni s?nete Spiritus, Trent
Cod. 92, ff.lOOMOl, no. 1453, pub. in D.T.?. XXVII, Teil 1? Band 53, 29-30;
the anonymous hymn Pange lingua gloriosi, lb. f.78, no. 1431 pub. Ib., 88; Dufay's
Benedicamus Domino, Mod. B, f.29; there are further examples in the Bologna MS,
and among the works of Binchois.
99 Since the completion of this article, Dr Ernst Apfel of Heidelberg has very
kindly sent me, in exchange for a copy, the typescript of his chapter "Der Faburdon",
from his forthcoming book on the technique of composition in English medieval
music. It is gratifying to find that we agree on the interpretation of the paragraph
in John Wylde's MS, and on its application to the surviving Faburden-tenors of the
late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries ? though we were working quite in
dependently, and unknown to each other. Dr Apfels's study is necessarily briefer than
mine. He re-interprets Pseudo-Tunstede's chapter on discant [Coussemaker, Script or es
IV, 294a] in a most convincing way, showing that this writer too was describing an
early form of Faburden; but he leaves the problem of Guilielmus Monachus well
alone.

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