Fuging tune
Encyclopedia
The fuguing tune is a variety of Anglo-American vernacular choral
music. It first flourished in the mid-18th century and continues to be composed today.
s. They are written for a four-part chorus singing a cappella
. George Pullen Jackson
has described the fuguing tune as follows:
A well-known fuguing tune that is typical of the form is "Northfield," written in 1800 by Jeremiah Ingalls
. The text is by Isaac Watts
:
According to Lowens, the fuguing tunes created by these singing masters at first involved a separate fuguing section appended to the end of a complete psalm tune. Later, the fuguing became more integrated and eventually evolved to be the longer part of the song.
Fuguing tunes were popular in rural areas of England, but were scorned by city dwellers. Their popularity did not endure in England past the end of the century, and the remaining history of the fuguing tune is largely American.
There is good evidence that by 1760, English tune books including fuguing tunes were circulating in the American colonies; the first English fuguing tune printed in America appeared in the hymnbook Urania, or A Choice Collection of Psalm-Tunes, Anthems, and Hymns by James Lyon
. Soon, fuguing tunes were being written in great profusion by American—especially New England—composers. Karl Kroeger (see reference below) has documented the publication of almost 1300 fuguing tunes during the period 1750-1820. Among the principal composers of New England fuguing tunes Irving Lowens lists the following:
The New England fuguing tune tradition ultimately failed to endure in New England itself, as it was gradually extirpated by the advent of a "better music" movement, headed by Lowell Mason
. This movement emphasized hymns with homophonic
texture, sung with the support of an organ
. The new music was incompatible with the polyphonic fuguing tune, which emphasized the ability of each section to sing on its own.
Despite the simpler texture of the new music, "better music" advocates succeeded in spreading the view that the earlier sacred music with its fuguing tunes was the work of yokel
s; in much of the country, "better music" won the day.
In the rural South, however, the older music survived, thanks in part to the conservative local tastes, and in part to the widespread popularity there of shape note
hymnals, which often included old fuguing tunes reset in shape notes. The 19th century Southern singers, while singing the old fuguing tunes regularly, did not create a great number of them themselves. Instead, their composers brought new resources to the tradition, for example from folk melody and camp meeting songs. Mid-century composers who did write fuguing tunes included Sarah Lancaster and J. P. Reese.
With the dawn of the 20th century, a new development resulted in the revival of fuguing tune composition. The community of singers who used The Sacred Harp
(whose shape note tradition is one of the most widely followed today) came to treating the music in their book as a valued heirloom. It is not surprising that the composition of fuguing tunes was revived among Sacred Harp singers, and new fuguing tunes have been added to The Sacred Harp in each of its many editions throughout the past century.
The general trends discussed above can be seen in the following chart, which is based on the songs of The Sacred Harp, 1991 Edition. The songs were sorted according to the date assigned them in this book (this is often the date of first publication, not composition), then grouped more or less arbitrarily into historical periods. The vertical axis plots the fraction of the total tunes from the given era that were fuguing tunes.
The particular popularity of fuguing tunes in both late 18th and the 20th centuries can be clearly seen.
" and "fuguing tune" means that the two forms are easily confused. A fuguing tune certainly is not some kind of failed attempt to write a fugue, as an ill-informed musicologist once asserted. This is plain from the different structures of the two genres: in a fugue, the voices take turns coming in at the very beginning of the piece, whereas in a fuguing tune that moment comes about a third of the way through. Moreover, in a fugue the musical material used at each entrance (the so-called "subject") is repeated many times throughout the piece, whereas in a fuguing tune it normally appears just in the one location of sequenced entries, and the rest of the work is somewhat more homophonic
in texture.
Indeed, "fuguing" does not derive from "fugue". Rather, as Irving Lowens points out, both terms hark back to a still earlier, more general usage (ultimately from Latin fugere "to flee"). He cites the words of Thomas Morley
, who wrote (in 1597 in his Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke) that "we call that a Fuge, when one part beginneth and the other singeth the same, for some number of Notes (which the first did sing)."
singers (currently the principal singers of fuguing tunes) find these tunes no more difficult to sing than shape note music in general; the regular spacing of the entries makes it usually fairly clear when a section should come in. Fuguing tunes are a bit harder, however, for the leader
, who must coordinate the fuguing entrances. Some advice for leaders is posted here.
Choir
A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
music. It first flourished in the mid-18th century and continues to be composed today.
Description
Fuguing tunes are sacred music, specifically, Protestant hymnHymn
A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...
s. They are written for a four-part chorus singing a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
. George Pullen Jackson
George Pullen Jackson
George Pullen Jackson was an American educator and musicologist.Jackson was a native of Monson, Maine. He was a pioneer in the field of Southern hymnody. Many consider him the "most diligent scholar of fasola singing" in the 20th century and one of the foremost musicologists of American folk songs...
has described the fuguing tune as follows:
- "In the fuging tune all the parts start together and proceed in rhythmic and harmonic unity usually for the space of four measures or one musical sentence. The end of this sentence marks a cessation, a complete melodic close. During the next four measures the four parts set in, one at a time and one measure apart. First the basses take the lead for a phrase a measure long, and as they retire on the second measure to their own proper bass part, the [tenors] take the lead with a sequence that is imitative of, if not identical with, that sung by the basses. The tenors in turn give way to the altos, and they to the trebles, all four parts doing the same passage (though at different pitches) in imitation of the [part in the] preceding measure. ... Following this fuguing passage comes a four-measure phrase, with all the parts rhythmically neck and neck, and this closes the piece; though the last eight measures are often repeated."
A well-known fuguing tune that is typical of the form is "Northfield," written in 1800 by Jeremiah Ingalls
Jeremiah Ingalls
Jeremiah Ingalls was born Andover, Massachusetts March 1, 1764 and died in Hancock, Vermont, April 6, 1838. He was one of the first American composers, and is considered among the First New England School.-Biography:...
. The text is by Isaac Watts
Isaac Watts
Isaac Watts was an English hymnwriter, theologian and logician. A prolific and popular hymnwriter, he was recognised as the "Father of English Hymnody", credited with some 750 hymns...
:
Variety in fuguing tunes
George Pullen Jackson's description above gives a common form for a fuguing tune, but there are variations.- Jackson describes the entrance order of the four parts as "bottom to top" (Bass-Tenor-Alto-Treble), but this is not the only possible order. Indeed, in the fuguing tunes printed in The Sacred HarpSacred HarpSacred Harp singing is a tradition of sacred choral music that took root in the Southern region of the United States. It is part of the larger tradition of shape note music.- The music and its notation :...
, 1991 edition, it is not even the most common one; the most common order is Bass-Tenor-Treble-Alto. There are many other orders possible, particularly if one includes the many cases in which composers bring in two parts at once (so that there are just three instead of four entrances). However, it does seem to be a widely valid rule that the basses must at least be included in the first group to enter. This may reflect a wish to support the entrances with a solid bass line, or perhaps just a practical consideration: thanks to the weight of existing tradition, the bass singers have considerable practice in coming in alone at the beginning of a musical phrase, practice which the other sections lack. Thus a fuguing tune with a bass-first structure is likely to be more stable in performance.
- The section of the tune that begins with the fuguing entrances can vary in length, though it is always as long, and usually longer, than the part coming before the fuguing entrances.
- Occasionally a second round of fuguing entrances is introduced.
History
The fuguing tune arose in England in the middle of the 18th century. The first fuguing tunes were the work of itinerant singing masters, described by Irving Lowens (see references below) as follows:- "[The singing masters were] often ill-trained by orthodox standards ... [They] wandered from village to village and eked out an existence by teaching the intricacies of psalm-singing and the rudiments of music to all who cared to learn. To supplement his generally meager income, [the singing master] frequently sold self-compiled tune-books in which psalm tunes of his own composition ... were featured as examples of his skill and artistry."
According to Lowens, the fuguing tunes created by these singing masters at first involved a separate fuguing section appended to the end of a complete psalm tune. Later, the fuguing became more integrated and eventually evolved to be the longer part of the song.
Fuguing tunes were popular in rural areas of England, but were scorned by city dwellers. Their popularity did not endure in England past the end of the century, and the remaining history of the fuguing tune is largely American.
There is good evidence that by 1760, English tune books including fuguing tunes were circulating in the American colonies; the first English fuguing tune printed in America appeared in the hymnbook Urania, or A Choice Collection of Psalm-Tunes, Anthems, and Hymns by James Lyon
James Lyon (composer)
- Life :James Lyon was born in Newark, New Jersey on July 1, 1735. It is known that his father was Zopher Lyon, but that he was orphaned at an early age. In 1750, Isaac Lyon and John Crane became James' guardians, until the age of twenty-one. Lyon then attended college at Nassau Hall, and...
. Soon, fuguing tunes were being written in great profusion by American—especially New England—composers. Karl Kroeger (see reference below) has documented the publication of almost 1300 fuguing tunes during the period 1750-1820. Among the principal composers of New England fuguing tunes Irving Lowens lists the following:
- William BillingsWilliam BillingsWilliam Billings was an American choral composer, and is widely regarded as the father of American choral music...
- Daniel ReadDaniel ReadDaniel Read was an American composer of the First New England School, and one of the primary figures in early American classical music.-Life and work:...
- Jacob FrenchJacob FrenchJacob French born July 15, 1754 in Stoughton, Massachusetts and died in 1817. He was a singing master and one of the first American composers.-Publications:*The New American Melody *The Psalmodist's Companion...
- Timothy SwanTimothy SwanTimothy Swan was a composer and hatmaker born in Worcester, Massachusetts. The son of goldsmith William Swan, Swan lived in small towns along the Connecticut River in Connecticut and Massachusetts for most of his life. Swan’s compositional output consisted mostly of psalm and hymn settings,...
- Stephen JenksStephen JenksStephen Jenks was an American composer, teacher, and tunebook compiler. He was born in Glocester, Rhode Island and raised in Ellington, Connecticut. During his life he moved from town to town, living in Ridgefield and New Canaan, Connecticut, Pound Ridge, New York, and Providence, Rhode Island,...
- Supply BelcherSupply BelcherSupply Belcher was an American composer, singer, and compiler of tune books. He was one of the members of the so-called First New England School, a group of mostly self-taught composers who created sacred vocal music for local choirs. He was active first in Lexington, Massachusetts, then...
- Abraham Maxim
- Lewis EdsonLewis EdsonLewis Edson Lewis Edson Lewis Edson (b 22 January 1748 and died 1820 in Woodstock, New York, was one of the first American composers. He began working as blacksmith, but soon after became a singing master and was a notable singer in his day...
- Joseph Stone
- Elisha West
- Justin MorganJustin MorganJustin Morgan was a U.S. horse breeder and composer.He was born in West Springfield, Massachusetts, and by 1788 had settled in Vermont. In addition to being a horse breeder and farmer, he was a teacher of singing; in that capacity he traveled considerably throughout the northeastern states...
- Daniel BelknapDaniel BelknapDaniel Belknap was a farmer, mechanic, militia captain, poet and singing teacher.Belknap was born in Framingham, Massachusetts, and was one of the first American composers. He compiled four sacred tunebooks in the years 1797-1806, and also issued a book of secular songs with music...
The New England fuguing tune tradition ultimately failed to endure in New England itself, as it was gradually extirpated by the advent of a "better music" movement, headed by Lowell Mason
Lowell Mason
Lowell Mason was a leading figure in American church music, the composer of over 1600 hymn tunes, many of which are often sung today. His most well-known tunes include Mary Had A Little Lamb and the arrangement of Joy to the World...
. This movement emphasized hymns with homophonic
Homophony
In music, homophony is a texture in which two or more parts move together in harmony, the relationship between them creating chords. This is distinct from polyphony, in which parts move with rhythmic independence, and monophony, in which all parts move in parallel rhythm and pitch. A homophonic...
texture, sung with the support of an organ
Organ (music)
The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
. The new music was incompatible with the polyphonic fuguing tune, which emphasized the ability of each section to sing on its own.
Despite the simpler texture of the new music, "better music" advocates succeeded in spreading the view that the earlier sacred music with its fuguing tunes was the work of yokel
Yokel
Yokel is a derogatory term referring to the stereotype of unsophisticated country people.-Stereotype:In the US, it is used to describe someone living in rural areas...
s; in much of the country, "better music" won the day.
In the rural South, however, the older music survived, thanks in part to the conservative local tastes, and in part to the widespread popularity there of shape note
Shape note
Shape notes are a music notation designed to facilitate congregational and community singing. The notation, introduced in 1801, became a popular teaching device in American singing schools...
hymnals, which often included old fuguing tunes reset in shape notes. The 19th century Southern singers, while singing the old fuguing tunes regularly, did not create a great number of them themselves. Instead, their composers brought new resources to the tradition, for example from folk melody and camp meeting songs. Mid-century composers who did write fuguing tunes included Sarah Lancaster and J. P. Reese.
With the dawn of the 20th century, a new development resulted in the revival of fuguing tune composition. The community of singers who used The Sacred Harp
Sacred Harp
Sacred Harp singing is a tradition of sacred choral music that took root in the Southern region of the United States. It is part of the larger tradition of shape note music.- The music and its notation :...
(whose shape note tradition is one of the most widely followed today) came to treating the music in their book as a valued heirloom. It is not surprising that the composition of fuguing tunes was revived among Sacred Harp singers, and new fuguing tunes have been added to The Sacred Harp in each of its many editions throughout the past century.
The general trends discussed above can be seen in the following chart, which is based on the songs of The Sacred Harp, 1991 Edition. The songs were sorted according to the date assigned them in this book (this is often the date of first publication, not composition), then grouped more or less arbitrarily into historical periods. The vertical axis plots the fraction of the total tunes from the given era that were fuguing tunes.
Fuguing tunes and fugues
The similarity of the terms "fugueFugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
" and "fuguing tune" means that the two forms are easily confused. A fuguing tune certainly is not some kind of failed attempt to write a fugue, as an ill-informed musicologist once asserted. This is plain from the different structures of the two genres: in a fugue, the voices take turns coming in at the very beginning of the piece, whereas in a fuguing tune that moment comes about a third of the way through. Moreover, in a fugue the musical material used at each entrance (the so-called "subject") is repeated many times throughout the piece, whereas in a fuguing tune it normally appears just in the one location of sequenced entries, and the rest of the work is somewhat more homophonic
Homophony
In music, homophony is a texture in which two or more parts move together in harmony, the relationship between them creating chords. This is distinct from polyphony, in which parts move with rhythmic independence, and monophony, in which all parts move in parallel rhythm and pitch. A homophonic...
in texture.
Indeed, "fuguing" does not derive from "fugue". Rather, as Irving Lowens points out, both terms hark back to a still earlier, more general usage (ultimately from Latin fugere "to flee"). He cites the words of Thomas Morley
Thomas Morley
Thomas Morley was an English composer, theorist, editor and organist of the Renaissance, and the foremost member of the English Madrigal School. He was the most famous composer of secular music in Elizabethan England and an organist at St Paul's Cathedral...
, who wrote (in 1597 in his Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke) that "we call that a Fuge, when one part beginneth and the other singeth the same, for some number of Notes (which the first did sing)."
Performance
Most gatherings of shape noteShape note
Shape notes are a music notation designed to facilitate congregational and community singing. The notation, introduced in 1801, became a popular teaching device in American singing schools...
singers (currently the principal singers of fuguing tunes) find these tunes no more difficult to sing than shape note music in general; the regular spacing of the entries makes it usually fairly clear when a section should come in. Fuguing tunes are a bit harder, however, for the leader
Leading Sacred Harp music
The Sacred Harp musical tradition is unusual in choral music in that the task of leading it is not delegated to a single expert, but is rotated among participants...
, who must coordinate the fuguing entrances. Some advice for leaders is posted here.
Books
- Jackson, George Pullen (1933) White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands. University of North Carolina Press. (1965 Edition: ISBN 0-486-21425-7)
- Kroeger, Karl (1993) American Fuging-Tunes, 1770-1820: A Descriptive Catalog . Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-29000-8.
- Lowens, Irving (1953) "The Origins of the American Fuging Tune," Journal of the American Musicological Society 6: 43-52.
- Lowens, Irving (1964) Music and Musicians in Early America. New York: Norton.
External links
- The original printed version of Northfield, from the Web site of Centre College, Danville, Kentucky. Ingalls's alterations of Isaac Watts's words, generally ignored today, can be seen.
- Singing Stoughton