Thread by @DactF

this is not a #chant #fragment but it not #chant in a pretty interesting way! also Tudor music is fun so here is a thread about a "Fayrfax" "O lux" (scare quotes on both counts) 1/

so this is a lil piece of instrumental polyphony, written (somewhat unusually) in score notation. the paper has some 6-line staffs, so it probably was meant for a few vocal lines and some lute tabs, but our guy is using the six-line staff for the top bc it has the most wiggles.2/

piece also has some little rhythmic games where you count 4 against 3. very popular hobby in sixteenth-century Britain: seeing if you can throw off your fellow musicians. 3/

the Baldwin Commonplace book (R.M.24.d.2) has all sorts of these counting-exercise-pieces. there's even two titled "O lux", as this fragment is. 4/

there's also an O lux by Tye in BL Add 31390, which is very fun bc it is written in all directions so you can play your viols around it.
this also makes it quite easy to see the melody of "o lux" at the bottom. 5/

There's an "o lux" associated w/ Fayrfax in a Scottish music textbook, Add MS 4911. (n.b. not the same as the fragment!) Like Tye et al, it is based on a melody with a fourth jump at the opening. F's version is much more decorated, but both are playing with the same melody.6/

here is where the #chant comes in. "O lux (beata Trinitas) is a very common Vespers hymn. but it doesn't go like that! should go like this, with G-A-G-F-E at the beginning. 7/

The Scottish textbook containing Fayrfax has several other examples that *are* based on the chant, like this one. So it's not like the chant melody was different or something. 8/

yet we get all these settings consistently using some other melody as their basis! so what's going on? what happened to the #chant? this is sort of weird. 9/

the answer is: FABURDEN!
what? you might say. or rather, Quhat?
fortunately we have a sixteenth-century Scot on hand to explain. 10/

Basically there are several ways to make #chant Fancy and harmonize it. One involves adding some notes at cadences. the "thrid" way is involves two "rewills", basically a two step process: 11/

First, transpose the chant up a sixth; add a part singing 4ths below, and a bass that harmonizes mostly in 3rds but not always, like so: 12/

THEN, take the bottom line you just made (which starts with a 4th jump!), and use it as the tenor line for a piece with three new lines.and this is where Fayrfax comes in as an example of this compositional technique! 13/

what's fun is that where you often see pieces based around chant, instead you get pieces based around this *countermelody* to a chant. and while sometimes composers kindly say that is what they are doing: 14/

...sometimes they don't, as if that was just how the hymn goes. the harmony part has officially stolen the show from the #chant part. 15/

back to the #fragment, while it doesn't seem to be the piece by Fayrfax, it is based on this "o lux" countermelody (maybe the whole technique was associated w/Fayrfax somehow?) G-C-G-A-G keeps showing up in the tenor part. 16/

anyway all this is to say while this is not a #chant #fragment, it *is* at two degrees remove from one!
does this happen to other chants or just "O lux"? #polyphony specialists--inquiring minds want to know! /end

more on this #fragment, including a watermark and a possible reconstruction, in this thread! v. cool :