Who was who
This area provides access to brief notes about individuals (mostly composers) connected with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century psalmody. The intention is to add to it gradually. If anyone spots a gap and knows how to fill it, please let me know!
The notes are ordered alphabetically by individuals' surnames, and are split into several documents as indicated below. To use the index, first select the appropriate link to go to the biographies for people whose surname starts with that letter. Then use the 'Find' command and type the person's surname.
Anonymous | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | OPQ | R | S | T | UV | WXYZ
Tony Singleton has set up a parallel resource on the WGMA website, a page of links to sites containing biographical details of hymn writers.
Abbreviations, definitions and notes
FT -- fuging tune
Temperley and Manns (1983) define this as follows: 'A tune (i.e. a psalm or hymn tune) [is] a piece of music intended for strophic repetition with a sacred metrical text. ... A tune is fuging if, in at least one phrase, two or more voice parts enter non-simultaneously, with rests preceding at least one entry, in such a way as to produce overlap of text.'
In the context of this index, a fuging tune is called 'new' in the publication with the earliest date. (And there is doubt about many of these dates, so please don't take this as gospel!)
The 'P', 'D' etc. numbers that follow the titles of publications are those given in the above sources, from which may be gleaned a wealth of additional information. Of course, the Hymn Tune Index is the source to consult, now that it has been published. When I have a little more time, I will try to incorporate more up-to-date information.
