Titelouze, Magnificat tertii Toni

[steltz]

I am trying to tag this, and it is confusing that it is not sung, but for organ. I came across another work called a "Magnificat Fugue", also for organ only, and tagged it as a fugue because it isn't the Magnificat as such.

But with the Titelouze, there isn't the luxury of such a title, though it contains 7 fugues, all for organ.

Tag as "fugues"?

[Davydov]

It's always the composer's designation that takes priority, so "magnificats" is the correct tag. We already have hymns and masses for solo organ, so it's not straying too far from the pack

[steltz]

Done! Next question: was it correct, then, in the Magnificat Fugue to take "Magnificat" as an adjective and "Fugue" as the taggable noun?

[Davydov]

If it had been "Magnificat-Fugue" then I'd have recommended tagging both parts (as we would do in "Valse-Scherzo" or "Scherzo-Fantasie", for example). The absence of the hyphen makes it more ambiguous, so it depends whether you think the original title was grammatically accurate or not

[Rob Peters]

Versets, used in combination with gregorian chant aren't that rare in organ literature. It's a standard genre in baroque literature, be it (organ-)masses, hymns, versper chants etc.
The basic principle was always gregorian chant alternating with organ versets, so that the choir would start with the first verse, then the organ would play a short piece instead of the second verse, then the choir again, and so forth.

In the case of Titelouze, I would advice against using the word "fugue", it's an anachronism. Just "Magnificat" will do nicely.

[steltz]

The problem with that solution is that the word "fugue" is in the title, and as Davydov said when I asked about a purely instrumental Magnificat,

It's always the composer's designation that takes priority

I can't think of any language where the adjective comes after the noun, so the word "fugue" has to be a noun. The only two possibilities I see here are "fugues" or "magnificats ; fugues".

[KGill]

I can't think of any language where the adjective comes after the noun ...

Well, for a start, how about all the Romance languages? Though I think it's clear anyway that the word fugue here refers to the musical form and does not serve to describe, say, the fugue state in which one might find oneself during a performance of the work. Are you sure, though, that the hyphenless title is really the accurate one? (It looks a little odd to me, just a feeling though.)