Liturgical Chant: Monody and
Faburden 1526 Deudsche Messe vnd ordnung Gottis dienst 143 Alternative Epistle: 1 Cor.
In all movements except the Credo (in which the chant is set in the top part in a simple form of
faburden) the chant is used as a cantus firmus in the tenor, mostly in semibreves, and sometimes in paraphrase.
I keepe my old course, to palter vp some thing in Prose, vsing mine old poesie still, Omne tulit punctum, although latelye two Gentlemen Poets, made two mad men of Rome beate it out of their paper bucklers: & had it in derision, for that I could not make my verses iet vpon the stage in tragicall buskins, euerie worde filling the mouth like the
faburden of Bo-Bell, daring God out of heauen with that Atheist Tamburlan, or blaspheming with the mad preest of the sonne: but let me rather openly pocket vp the Asse at Diogenes hand: then wantonlye set out such impious instances of intollerable poetrie, such mad and scoffing poets, that haue propheticall spirits as bred of Merlins race, if there be anye in England that set the end of scollarisme in an English blanck verse.
In this edition, reconstruction of the tenor parts has revealed much about the use of plainsong and
faburden, either as a structural basis or as material for incidental reference.
The logic is therefore that the English developed
faburden and gave it a perfectly logical name which described precisely what was happening, that is, singing or sighting fa.
Sandon has shown convincingly that the polyphony is built around the
faburden of the first psalm tone which is employed as a cantus firmus in the tenor part, since the surviving voice parts make several allusions to this
faburden melody.