Harmonized chant or "fauxbourdon"
  • Imperator
    Posts: 11
    Hello, ladies and gentlemen.

    Ever since seeing the YouTube video of the Magnificat in the CIEL 2006 conference at Oxford, I've been inspired to figure out what exactly that style of chant is. What I found during my Google quests is a style of music called fauxbourdon, which is a kind of harmonized chant. There is also apparently a style called faburden. I'm not really sure what the difference is.

    If you know anything about this or harmonized chant, is there any wisdom you could share here? I'd like to incorporate the style used in the video perhaps for singing the Alleluia verse on Ascension or Pentecost, just to break the monotony of using the same old acclamation & psalm tone every time, but without going so far as using the chant in the Graduale (Latin, Ordinary Form, 3 voices for an all-men's schola). Unfortunately, I'm not a professional musician and I don't want to ask my choir director because he's just too darn busy to worry about this kind of stuff. But if you know about this and can give some basic guidelines on composition, I'd be quite grateful. I could then pass the info on to someone I know in real life who knows more about music theory and composition than I do. If we're lucky, we could use harmonized chant on a regular basis.
  • David AndrewDavid Andrew
    Posts: 1,206
    Fauxbourdon, or falso bordone (Italian), is a way of setting psalm tones from Gregorian chant. Typically the psalm tone formula will be buried in one of the interior voices, and may have been modified to make accommodations for the harmonies constructed around it.

    The one heard in this video is set for three mens' voices with the chant formula in the middle voice. Also, as demonstrated here, falso bordone are sung in alternation with the actual chant.

    The trick in preparing and executing falso is to determine which psalm tone formula you're using and then start digging through historic collected editions and places like the CPDL to find falsos that match. The even trickier part is that most falsos are just the music; it is left up to the musician to set the texts. In the example heard here, all three voices are moving homophonically, which is fairly easy to deal with. In the more complex (and more beautiful) falsos of Vittoria, for example, the rhythmic motion of the decorating voices sometimes does not line up in a logical manner with the text/notes of the tone carried by the inner voice. There are some understood "rules" about how to set the text, as explained to me by a colleague who had researched it through various sources (including musicologists from the Oberlin Conservatory and Eastman), which include concepts like not setting a particular syllable in any other voice until that syllable has been sung by the voice carrying the original chant melody. Not an easy feat, let me tell you!

    I will say that there is a great deal of satisfaction in mastering the technique of singing falso, but it does take some work.

    By the way, many of you probably already know this, but Anglican chant actually has its roots in falso, and in the oldest ones the vestiges of the original Gregorian chant formula can be found.
  • rich_enough
    Posts: 1,050
    You can find a settings in this style for all the psalms of the church year in the hymnal "Hymns, Psalms and Spiritual Canticles" published by the Boston Archdiocesan Choir School (BACS) in the early 1980s. You'll need a copy of the "Choir edition." (It's notoriously difficult to find a copy to buy, but perhaps you can get one via interlibrary loan). I've also tried my hand at some settings which you can find on the Chabanel Psalms website:

    http://chabanelpsalms.org/responsorial_psalms.htm

    I wrote the music to the psalm antiphons and then set the verses to Gregorian psalm tones and harmonies from various Renaissance composers.

    Sam Schmitt
  • JulesVanNuffel
    Posts: 126
    Sam,

    Your amazing settings remind me of Marier's.

    (I hope that is a compliment!)
  • Michael O'Connor
    Posts: 1,637
    As far as terms go, yes, fauxbourdon and falsobordone are essentially cognates, but fauxbourdon really connotes the harmonic style of Burgundian polyphony from the 15th century. It derives from a improvised tradition of harmonized English plainchant (faburden) that composers like Dufay and Binchois heard in the music of (for example) John Dunstaple, who used the sound in his own polyphony. So, when I use the term "fauxbourdon" I'm referring to the sound of parallel 6/3 chords (usually in 3 parts) in composed polyphony. When I use the term falsobordone, I am referring to formulas for harmonizing plainchant during the Renaissance, that tend more towards full 4-part settings with bass movement along the roots. Yeah, it's splitting hairs, but when I see "falsobordon" in Spanish sources of the 16th century, I know that they are referring to the latter practice, not the former. In any event, it is an under-explored area in chant performance, perhaps because modern aesthetics leans more towards the ethereal sounds of monophonic chant. Nothing wrong with that of course.
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