The fuguing tune (often fuging tune) is a variety of Anglo-American vernacular choral music. It first flourished in the mid-18th century and continues to be composed today.
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Fuguing tunes are sacred music, specifically, Protestant hymns. 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:[1]
George Pullen Jackson's description above gives a common form for a fuguing tune, but there are variations.
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:
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 yokels; 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.
The similarity of the terms "fugue" 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.[2] 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)."
Most gatherings of shape note 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.