Writing a Sacred Harp fuguing tune, composers are challenged to take voices that are staggered — singing words out of sync — and gather them into sync again.
In the last post in this series, I talked about gathering two voices. Gathering four is trickier, but here I’m going to talk about one way to do it: having the voices move as couples.
In fact, anything you can do with single voices, you can do with couples, which makes this trick useful in many situations. Composers use it to write quick, compact fugues that wrap up very tidily — like the one in Lenox (SH 40), the song in the video above. They also use it in longer fugues for flashier effects — like in Youthful Blessings (CH 64), which I discuss below, and many other songs; I’ll briefly mention some examples.
- “As couples”
- Practical details
- Lenox
- Youthful Blessings
- Approximately as couples
- What’s it good for?
“As couples”
As I said, getting two voices gathered is easy. For instance, here’s one way to do it. Suppose two of the voices are singing two-measure phrases like these.
The year of Jubilee is come;
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.
If they enter one measure apart, the phrases will be out of sync, like this:
We saw in the last post that to sync them up, you can let the voice that’s
ahead stretch out its rhythm, like this.
Here’s the new idea in this post: we can get extra mileage out of this trick —
or any other — by using it on pairs of voices. If we have pairs of voices
a measure apart, then the pair that’s ahead can stretch out its rhythm.
Since we got two single voices gathered before, we get two pairs of voices
gathered now. And that’s everyone — we’re done with the whole fugue.
In square dancing, there’s a concept called “as couples.” Anything a single dancer can do, two dancers can do by pretending they’re a single dancer. If one person can turn alone, two can turn as a couple. If two can dance a do-si-do, four can do it as couples.
This is the same idea, so let’s use the same word. We gathered all four voices up using a trick originally designed for two, by having them move “as couples.”
Practical details
Now, in a real fugue, the voices often don’t start in couples.
1
1
Though sometimes they do: see McKay
(SH 433), Sacred Mount
(SH 456), and lots of others.
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Instead, they enter one at a time, and form couples
later. Well, that’s ok, we know from the previous post how to pair two voices
off. One easy way is to start with voices two measures apart and let one of
them repeat a line of music, like in this picture:
If you time things right, you can get both your couples formed this way:
The other complication is that the couples aren’t always close to each other on the staff, or close in pitch. Maybe the red and orange voices are a couple even though one is the treble and the other is the bass. Well, we can still think of them as a couple even if we don’t draw them next to each other anymore:
Lenox
This is, in fact, the pattern of the fugue for Lenox (SH 40) — the one in the video above, one of the shortest and tidiest fugues in the book, and a popular choice for the first one to teach a new singer.
Now that we’ve seen it in pictures, let’s look at the notes.
Forming couples
First of all, the voices come together as couples. The bass and treble, who enter two measures apart, gather together as a couple when the bass repeats a line.
From there, they stay as a couple until the end, singing the same words at (almost) exactly the same time.
The tenor and alto make the same move, though they start a little later: first, they gather.
Then, they stay that way, singing the same words at exactly the same time.
Gathering as couples
Now, for a minute, let’s treat each couple as a single part.
We can even write them that way: melody and alto on the top staff, and the other two on the bottom, as if it was a church hymnal or a piano score.
Now, we’re looking at the same problem of gathering two voices, only instead of voices we’re looking at couples. The two couples have staggered entrances. The bottom couple — the voices on the bottom staff — start a measure before the top couple, and then have to stretch out their rhythm at the end to let the top couple catch up.
Other songs that use this trick to wrap a fugue up tidily are Heavenly Dove (SH 371), Conversion (SH 297, though with some almost-coupling), Sounding Joy (SH 391), and New Bethany (SH 431).
Youthful Blessings
In a longer fugue, you can do a lot with couples. Youthful Blessings (64 in the Christian Harmony; also recently reprinted as 114 in the Shenandoah Harmony) is a great example.
This sounds satisfyingly complicated to sing — and it looks complicated in a drawing.
But it works the same way as Lenox: by forming the parts into two couples and then gathering the couples. Once they’re gathered, it splits them back out into couples and gathers them again.
Here’s the first step of that: forming the first set of couples.
Here those couples are gathering together — this time just by giving the lower couple a long held note:
And here’s the second set of couples:
Other songs with this sort of strong couple energy, at least for a stretch, are My Brightest Days (SH 546), The Better Land (SH 454), and Leaning on Jesus’ Breast (Cooper 450, reprinted as ShH 96).
Approximately as couples
Composers sometimes have two voices work as an approximate couple: they fall out of sync by a few beats one way or the other, but they never stray far. This happened in older songs (in Lenox, one of the voices strays from its partner for a beat), but it happens more in 20th Century ones, especially ones whose composers were connected to “convention song” gospel.
Here are the alto and bass of Wondrous Cross (SH 447) for the first half of the fuguing part. They continue like this, approximately coupled, until the end of the song.
And here are the treble and bass at the end of the fugue in The Better Land (SH 454).
Writing all four parts out hymnal-style shows the bigger pattern: the top couple keeping perfect pace with each other, the bottom couple keeping approximate pace, and the two couples gathering together as if each was a single dancer.
What’s it good for?
This has been a bunch of pictures and math. What is this trick actually good for? What sorts of music can you make with it?
Here are some kinds of fugues that really take advantage of couples for a dramatic effect:
- Compact fugues that wrap up quickly: Lenox (SH 40), Russia (SH 107), Heavenly Dove (SH 371)
- …or longer ones that get into sync quickly and then spend a long time there: New Bethany (SH 431)
- Fugues with call and response between couples, often in songs that feel like edge cases — we’re not sure whether to call them fugues or not: Lawrenceburg (SH 380), Never Part (SH 94)
- Ones with Gospel-quartet-style playfulness: The Better Land (SH 454)
- Ones that let one couple hold back so the other can sing a duet: The Last Words of Copernicus (SH 112), Oxford (SH 306), Present Joys (SH 318)
It’s also common for longer fugues of all kinds to spend a little while in couples at the very end — not for any dramatic effect, just as a means to an end. Greenwich (SH 183) and Calvary (SH 300) are two well-known fugues that do this.
And there are fugues of all kinds where two voices spend the whole thing coupled up. Often the alto is one of the coupled voices. Sometimes this is because the alto was written later, and fitted into an existing rhythm. Other times, it seems to be because the composer wanted to make the fugue entrances more compact.