Forms: 6–8 fuge, (7 fug), 7–8 feuge, 7– fugue. [a. F. fugue, ad. It. fuga lit. ‘flight’:—L. fuga, related to fugĕre to flee.] ‘A polyphonic composition constructed on one or more short subjects or themes, which are harmonized according to the laws of counterpoint, and introduced from time to time with various contrapuntal devices’ (Stainer and Barrett). Double Fugue (see quot. 1880).
1597. Morley, Introd. Mus., 76. 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).
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 113. The Reports, and Fuges, haue an Agreement with the Figures in Rhetoricke, of Repetition, and Traduction.
a. 1646. J. Gregory, Posthuma (1649), 48. The Contrapunctum figuratum, consisting of Feuges, or maintaining of Points.
1667. Pepys, Diary, 15 Sept. The sense of the words being lost by not being heard, and especially as they set them with Fuges of words, one after another.
1667. Milton, P. L., XI. 563. His volant touch Instinct through all proportions low and high Fled and pursu’d transverse the resonant fugue.
1795. Mason, Ch. Mus., i. 59. The Fugue is indeed come into disrepute with Modern Masters, and with reason.
1875. Ouseley, Mus. Form, ii. 4. Counterpoint and the art of Fugue can he mastered thoroughly by dint of laborious application.
1880. Grove, Dict. Mus., I. 459. Double Fugue, a common term for a fugue on two subjects, in which the two start together.
transf. 1863. Geo. Eliot, Romola, I. i. Elderly market-women, with their egg-baskets in a dangerously oblique position, contributed a wailing fugue of invocation.
Comb. 1869. Ouseley, Counterp., xviii. 150. Of all kinds of musical composition, none perhaps is so important as the art of fugue-writing.
