From Latin fuga 'flight,' via Italian, describing how a melody 'flees' from voice to voice in counterpoint.
A contrapuntal musical composition in which a short melody is introduced by one voice and then successively taken up by others.
From Italian fuga, from Latin fuga 'a fleeing, flight,' from fugere 'to flee.' The musical term captures how the melody seems to 'flee' from one voice to the next, with each part chasing the one before it. J.S. Bach's Art of Fugue (1751) is the form's supreme monument. Key roots: *bʰewg- (Proto-Indo-European: "to flee, escape").