‘O lux Fayrefax’: a new fragment from Tudor England

This article presents a new musical fragment from Tudor England that was recently rediscovered during a cataloguing exercise at Cambridge University Library. The fragment contains a tantalizingly cryptic attribution to one of the finest composers of English pre-Reformation music, Robert Fayrfax. A cursory glance would suggest that the fragment is Fayrfax’s setting of the Trinitarian hymn, O lux beata Trinitas. In reality, however, the two settings are not the same. Instead, the fragment presents something far rarer: a didactic compositional sketch from Tudor England. The article explores the possible connection of this fragment to Robert Fayrfax and considers its wider significance within the context of 16th-century music education and compositional practices (chiefly faburden of the third kind). Competing hypotheses concerning the origins of the fragment are evaluated, including its potential usage as a pedagogical tool, alongside discussion of its broader implications for understanding early English polyphony and educational traditions.