- Fauxbourdon
Fauxbourdon (also Fauxbordon, and also commonly two words:
Faux bourdon ) – French for "false bass" – is a technique of musical harmonisation used in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, particularly by composers of theBurgundian School .Guillaume Dufay was a prominent practitioner of the form, and may have been its inventor. The monotonousquality of the parallel chords allows the text of the mostlyliturgical lyrics to be understood clearly.Description
In its simplest form, fauxbourdon consists of the
cantus firmus and two otherpart s a sixth and aperfect fourth below. To prevent monotony, or create a cadence, the lowest voice sometimes jumps down to the octave, and any of the accompanying voices may have minor embellishments. Usually just a small part of a composition employs the fauxbourdon technique.Hymn singing
In a "
hymn ", the term is sometimes used when the sings in paralleloctave s, with somesinger s singing atreble descant over the melody, but the term was historically used to indicate an arrangement of the tune in four parts with the melody in the tenor voice, such as those composed by Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century English composers includingJohn Dowland ,Giles Farnaby , andThomas Ravenscroft .Four part homophony
Sometimes fauxbourdon is taken to be a homophonous four
part setting.History
The earliest example of fauxbourdon may be in the
Bologna manuscript "I-BC Q15" ("Bologna, Civico museo bibliografico musicale, Q15"), compiled around 1440, which contains several examples, including one by Dufay, dating probably to around 1430. Since many early 15th century compositions are anonymous, and dating is often problematic, exact determination of the authorship of the earliest fauxbourdon is difficult. Dufay's contribution to this collection contains the first actual use of the term, in the closing part of his "Missa Sancti Jacobi". It is possible that his use of the word "bourdon" was intended as a pun on St. James' "staff" (which Dufay, or the copyist, drew in miniature above the music).The earliest definitely datable example of fauxbourdon is in a
motet by Dufay, "Supremum est mortalibus", which was written for the treaty reconciling the differences betweenPope Eugene IV and Sigismund, after which Sigismund was crowned asHoly Roman Emperor , which happened onMay 31 ,1433 . In this motet, which is for four voices, when the tenor—the lowest voice—drops out, the upper three voices proceed in fauxbourdon.Even though its first use appears to have been in
Italy , fauxbourdon was to become a defining characteristic of the Burgundian style which flourished in theLow Countries through the middle of the 15th century. Composers such asGilles Binchois ,Antoine Busnois , andJohannes Brassart all frequently used the technique, always adapting it to their personal styles.A related, but separate development took place in England in the 15th century, called
faburden . While superficially similar, especially in that it involved chains of 6-3 chords with octave-fifth consonances at the ends of phrases, faburden was a schematic method of harmonization of an existing chant; in the case of faburden, the chant was in the middle voice.ee also
Falsobordone : a type of singing related by name, but only slightly in style.ources
* [http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Blair/Courses/MUSL242/dufay98.htm http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Blair/Courses/MUSL242/dufay98.htm]
* [http://www.dolmetsch.com/defsf.htm http://www.dolmetsch.com/defsf.htm]
* H. Besseler, "Bourdon und Fauxbourdon" (Leipzig, 1950)
* "Sources, MS: Renaissance Polyphony": "The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians", ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1-56159-174-2
* Brian Trowell: "Fauxbourdon", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed August 20, 2005), [http://www.grovemusic.com (subscription access)]
*Gustave Reese , "Music in the Renaissance". New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0-393-09530-4
* H. Grace, H. V. Hughes, H. R. Norton, G. Shaw, M. Shaw, and C. A. Becket Williams, "The Tenor Tune Book" (London, 1917)
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