Hey guys,
This is probably a stupid question but I could really use the tips lol.
I've usually avoided learning fugues in the past, but as this year I am taking a year out to progress and take exams and I've decided to learn new styles, set myself a challenge and learn to be more open minded and not just choose the usual Romantic styles.
So it's the Handel fugue in C minor no 6 I'm learning for the A list for grade 8.
My question is, with so many counter-rhythms and voicing, how do you go about learning it? Do you just learn each voice first then slowly put them together etc..?
Any advice would be great, I love this piece and am really excited about learning it.
PSL

Personally, I usually go for the nuts and bolts approach. Treat it like a piece of flat-pack furniture (lay all the pieces out and check them against the packing list. Then attach piece A to piece B etc).

So go through the score, picking out the subject wherever it appears and noting which voice it's in. Same with the countersubject(s). Once you have worked out what goes where, start putting the voices together, one hand at a time, so you begin to see how the voices mesh.

Someone with a different approach might suggest that you dive straight in, sight-read through the whole thing and practise it slowly until it comes together. I might do this if I have a deadline. But there's something very satisfying about seeing it take shape bit by bit.

It is interesting to take it paprt and look at where the voices go to understand how the piece works but I (personally) haven't found it helpful in physically learning to play them.

The business of hands separate for a while and then hands together works with many things but not, in my experience, with counterpoint. It is a great bother to work out where the left hand will do the alto part (sometimes for only 1 or 2 notes in a block of semiquavers) and you might just as well spend the time working through the fugue slowly and jump straight in with hands together. Do it 1 or 2 bars at a time and try to memorise it in your fingers and memorise the score - it takes ages but sooner or later it should sink in.

Many words have been written on this subject and no doubt many will disagree with me but I can live with that.

In that case your understanding has not gone far enough or deep enough. You have to go beyond "interesting" and take it apart in detail: subject, countersubjects, free counterpoint, relationships between them, stretti, entries, harmonic progression, modulations ... and live with it for long enough to know it like the streets and alleys of your home town.

I'll put aside the monstrous assumptions about my understand of fugue (or lack thereof) and gently reassert what I have found helpful in learning to play a fugue.
An intellectual grasp of all the things you mention does not in itself I find, help one to get one's fingers around the piece. I will agree that it greatly informs the interpretation but it also takes a great deal of time learning a fugue properly and the component parts will become obvious the more you play it.
I have tried the many suggestions offered previously including photocopying the piece and highlightling each voice in seaprate colours etc but I'm aftaid the time would have been better spent sitting at the piano working patiently through it in sections.

When I set about learning the Bach fugue for my Dip', I did the photocopy/highlighting thing, but since I have long enjoyed listening to the intricate interweaving of subjects and counter-subjects in Reger organ works, I didn't feel that the task did anything for me.

True, in that particular fugue there is no fully-rounded second-subject per se, so I might see where highlighter pens get me when I tackle the next one.

No offence intended. Just the usual complete lack of tact.

For developing the physical co-ordination to play the things I find spending a lot of time and effort sorting out fingering to match the phrasing is a big help. Followed by slow practice of the whole thing, working on the ability to bring out any voice at will.

But fugues are hard.

Absolutely agree with this. Other things help but this one cannot be ducked.

Tom, you regularly offer excellent, very well-informed and helpful advice. But I have noticed you can appear a little inclined to present your opinions (carefully considered and researched though they may be) as fact and, in doing so, can occasionally come across as a bit blunt to us senstitive musician types... I hope I have been sufficiently deferential in making this observation with which you may feel free to disagree.

But you are (all??) smart enough to see through the facade, and to distinguish opinion from fact

Deference appreciated, but unnecessary! Be as blunt as you like.

Well yes, but sometimes suggestions and criticisms (even constructive ones) are easier to accept if they're delivered in a less dogmatic or challenging way, so that responding to them doesn't provoke an instinctively defensive reaction, and so that changing one's approach accordingly isn't felt to be an admission of failure or incompetence.

Will do!

Have to agree with this! What I do is listen quite a bit to somebody like Angela Hewitt, and the more I play it, listening intermittently, the better it gets. I don't concern myself too much about anything but the most obvious subject entries in the early stages, and do more of the analysing bit once I've got my head round playing the notes. If you want to find all the alleyways, you have to find the main road first! Even once you think you have the damned thing as good as you think it's going to get, though, there's nothing to beat having a really good teacher listen really carefully. And if they say on the first hearing that it's fine, then you probably need another teacher! I got full marks in ALCM for this; my approach may not work for everybody, but it certainly worked for me on that occasion. It's sort of like doing a jigsaw that has lots of bits of the picture coming together at the same time, rather than starting with, say, the grass, or the sky. Being consistent with fingering is obviously more important than ever in a fugue, and I write finger numbers in all over the place. As it comes together and I gain a better understanding of phrasing some of these may change, but you have to start somewhere!

I have to admit that having had a few attempts I've come to the conclusion that me and fugue don't get on.
Maybe I'll get back to trying again some time but as there's so much piano music I've accepted that there's no way I'll learn to play a significant proportion anyway. In that case, while being prepared to try out new things, I'm not going to get stressed over the things I don't get on with.

It would be good to be able to manage a wider range than I generally do but I know I'm not a several hours a day seriously focussed practice person (ok I could work towards changing that if I REALLY wanted) and though I'm working towards a much more positive attitude I'm no prodigy but will just continue aiming for whatever progress I can manage.
Besides, after the first 'I quite like the sound of that theme' part I don't really get anything out of listening to a fugue either.

In some cases I agree with this too! I have to like the thing as a complete piece of music, as well as the sum of its parts, before I'll want to give it the time it'll take. Some are just more worth it than others, in my opinion. Listen to the G Major Fugue - which I THINK is in Book 2. It's the one with the really short Prelude - less than a minute long - in case that rings a bell with anybody who can correct me or confirm which book it's from. My music room is in the middle of its annual reorganisation, and I don't even want to open the door right now to go and check... ANYWAY, I challenge you not to like this one as a piece of music! (I haven't tackled this one yet personally, but would like to some day.)

A few practical suggestions based on things that have and haven't worked for me when learning a fugue:

- When I first start learning a fugue, I sight read it through VERY slowly playing with both hands. At this stage I'm looking a number of things: (1) for instances where it may be easier to take different parts with a different hand to what is indicated. (2) for what the best fingering to use is, and (3) to start thinking about the fugue's structure (exposition, answers, etc).
- I then write that fingering in, with a finger number on every single note
- Then it's a case of practicing it hands separately and hands together. I never stop practicing it hands separately.
- As part of this practice, I slowly "absorb" the fugue mentally. During the practice, I start playing around with bringing out different voices, and am generally led by what I think sounds best (although I do make sure that entries sound above everything else). Once decided what sounds best, I write the dynamics in.
- Hands separately, hands together, practice, practice, practice.

I've tried the technique of highlighting the different voices in highlighter pen, and I've even re-written a Bach fugue in open-score form (separate line for each voice) using a pencil and manuscript paper. I can safely say that neither of these helped my performance in the slightest.

I think you're talking about the one in Book 1 Dulciana..

I agree its by far my favourite P&F - hopefully I'll be learning it in a month or two

I think I can remember though... MadTom saying that he was at a masterclass or something and the teacher said that this is, in his opinion, one of the most difficult peices to play well?

Oh well.... it will definately be worth the time spent practicing!

Some advice from a well-known exponent of Bach:

Glenn Gould: "So you want to write a fugue."

It could improve with time. The first fugues I heard were C major and C minor from Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I. I was at the ripe old age of 8. I was captivated by the sound of them - I don't know who the pianist was, it was on one of those "Everybody Loves ____" cassette tape series that my parents had.

I'm showing my age here by saying they were on cassette =D but that should then help my next point which is that many years later, with a break of seven years of no music in between, only now am I finally starting to get these fugues. I did give them a whirl when i was a piano student, to see if I could understand them- not a chance. Now when I play them, I hear not just a piano, but echoes of various other Bach non-keyboard pieces that I have had. Listening to baroque strings has informed my playing of keyboard fugues, I think, because I have started to be able to use different articulations (inspired by how baroque string players articulate) to bring out the voices.

I like your attitude of not being stressed about the things you don't get on with- I think that sounds really healthy, and you're not a professional musician (I assume?) so you can play purely for fun. But I suspect in a few years' time, you may have vastly different results if you try fugues again.