fauxbourdon

Name given to a wide variety of technical procedures in the 15th-16th centuries, usually involving improvisation. As originally used by Guillaume Dufay and others, the term implied the use of chains of 6-3 chords, the middle part being ‘improvised’ by doubling the top part a fourth lower throughout; later, different techniques were employed to achieve the same effect. The English used their version of the word for a similar process, the three parts being improvised straight from plainsong (at first in the middle, later in the top part). The fauxbourdon itself (that is, the lowest part) was also used as the basis of entirely new compositions.

In the later 15th and early 16th centuries, the use of the term in both France and England was enormously extended to include techniques in which the idea of 6-3 chords was entirely lost. It is to this final stage in its history that the Italian use of the term belongs, meaning initially a kind of fauxbourdon in four parts with the ‘true’ bass supplied beneath the false one, and ultimately nothing more than simple declamatory composition in note-against-note style.