Apart from an undated mention of his name in the records of the church of St Donatian, Bruges, he is known to have been a singer at the court of Holland at The Hague from 1395 until his death in May 1400 (Reaney 2001).
Two of these have French texts (Or se depart and N'ay je cause d’estre lies et joyeux) and are in the ars subtilior style, highly complex and mannered (Reaney 2001).
The other two ballades are in Dutch (Eer ende lof heb d'aventuer and Een cleyn parabel), with a simpler syllabic style of setting (Reaney 2001).
The Leiden manuscript in which all of Fabri's works are found also contains an incomplete ballade, Een cleyn parabel, the text of which describes a dilemma: the poet loves his lady and would like to marry her, but finds it difficult to accept her recently born child.
This may be an autobiographical reference: Martinus Fabri had a son baptized in April 1396, and the godmother was Margaret of Cleves, Countess of Holland (Wegman 1992, 194).