Hymns and Fuguing Tunes

• A “fuging tune” (aka “fuguing tune,” aka “hymn and fuguing tune”) is a psalm tune/hymn tune genre originating in 18^th C. Britain and imported to America, where it flourished in early American music and continues to be used in traditional shape-note singing. The style consists of a homophonic passage followed by a faster imitative contrapuntal section.
  • A “fuging tune” does not follow the strict contrapuntal form of a fugue, though both genres do begin with imitative entries.¹
• Cowell composed a numbered set of 18 “Hymn and Fuguing Tune” pieces between 1943-1964,² for varying instrumental forces.³
• These pieces were influenced by memories of rural hymn singing Cowell heard as a child in the Midwest.⁴
• Regarding his use of the “hymn and fuguing tune” genre, Cowell said he was “frankly influenced by the early American style of [William] Billings and [William] Walker.” He also described the form simply as “something slow followed by something fast”⁵

“I asked myself the question, “What would have happened in America if this fine serious early style had developed?” ⁶

Cowell, on his “Hymns and Fuguing Tunes”

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Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 5 for Strings (ENCO Cut # 46054)

• This piece was probably composed around 1946. It premiered that year in Saratoga Springs, New York.⁷

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Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10 for Oboe and Strings (ENCO Cut #46056)

• Composed 1955; premiered same year in Santa Barbara, conducted by Leopold Stokowski⁸

1. Harvard Dictionary of Music, 4^th ed., s.v. “Fuging tune, fuge tune” (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003).
2. Eileen E. Swanson, liner notes to Henry Cowell: Music for Strings, Northwest Chamber Orchestra Seattle, Alun Francis, CPO 999 222-2, CD, 1993.
3. David Nicholls and Joel Sachs, “Cowell, Henry” Grove Music Online (2013), acccesed August 27, 2019,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002249182.
4. Swanson, liner notes to Henry Cowell: Music for Strings.
5. Nicholls and Sachs, “Cowell, Henry” Grove Music Online.
6. Eileen E. Swanson, liner notes to Henry Cowell: Music for Strings, Northwest Chamber Orchestra Seattle, Alun Francis, CPO 999 222-2, CD, 1993.
7. Nicholls and Sachs, “Cowell, Henry” Grove Music Online.
8. Ibid.