Quhat is Faburdoun?

Abstract

The anonymous Scottish manuscript The Art of Music makes frequent, if often brief, appearances in studies on extemporized traditions of singing in the sixteenth century. The manuscript is mostly a collation of a number of earlier theoretical writings, and was likely created for practical use in a post-Reformation Scottish ‘song school’ around 1580, coinciding with a government-mandated surge in Scottish musical education. This article focuses on a single chapter, that which addresses the subject of ‘faburden’. It aims to provide a new edition of the chapter as well as a translation from sixteenth-century Scots into modern English, alongside a brief summary and commentary. The chapter itself details four different types of faburden, all involving a degree of structural rigidity, while nevertheless often demonstrating immense floridity in their realization. Of particular note are the extensive examples illustrating each rule given by the anonymous author. By providing a new edition of this practically oriented work, the author hopes that the colourful techniques described therein can be more easily integrated into modern ‘historically informed’ practice.