Very curious how others go about learning a fugue, such as those beloved pieces on the Grade 8 A list.

Do you start with desk work before hitting the instrument?
What analysis steps do you take?
Do you study section by section or voice by voice or both?

etc.

Analysis? Nah. I go in all guns blazing. If things start to get hairy (which they often do), I stop and play it a bit slower, perhaps in each individual hand. If things get really bad, I'll take it down to voices, but that confuses me with fingerings and whatnot. So if I can't get it by playing hands seperately, I generally consider it too hard for me and give up.

But the Bach A1 on grade 8 is a nasty, nasty fugue. The prelude is amazing, but the fugue is mean.

I start by working out fingerings carefully for each section - I find this quite time consuming - and decide if there are any bits where I need to play notes with the other hand.

Then I look at and learn each voice separately - I find this essential to understand the piece.

Later I put it together a bit at a time and then work on sections.

I tend to work on pieces like this quite intensively for a week of so then rest them for a few weeks before going back for another go. It takes me a long time to learn a fugue, but I love them - sooo satisfying when you finally crack it. I always find more things each time I revisit one.

Which one are you learning?

If the edition I'm using has them (and they usually do) I read the editors notes first (if not, e.g. Debussy, though they're not fugues, try the Internet). Editors notes will often have tips such as a guide to the articulation of the main theme or themes, the speed at which the editor thinks it should go, trip-up points etc.

For example, the piece I'm working on at the moment is a 3 part fugue; the Sinfonia number 3 in D major. The editors notes suggest that the main 5 note motif is articulated as da-da-dit dit dit (da is legato semiquaver, dit a staccato quaver). I went through the piece marking in pencil everywhere I could find this motif and where, therefore, two or three staccato notes should be (there are at least 32 iterations in the 25 bars - I'm still finding them). It rapidly became obvious that sometimes the fifth note of the motif must be tied to the next, so sometimes only two. Add this to the fairly usual baroque practice of playing the shorter notes legato and the longer ones abreviated and some idea of how to play the piece emerged.

I then went to the keyboard one hand at a time and discovered why my teacher had described this piece as a finger-breaker! Once I had got each hand separately more or less, with the odd fingerings sorted out (they make perfect sense, and although they're awkard the only alternatives are worse or impossible) I started to put it together. It felt like all the work I'd done hands apart was wasted and I was back to square one, except that I wasn't: progress was more rapid and if in doubt I could go back for the odd phrase to the hands separate for a bar or two (or less), then together, then slot in.

Right now I can play it right through with the music in front of me at nearly full speed (by my reckoning, though this is subject to some highly varied opinions) and without too many mistakes. I'm starting to think about phrasing, how to bring out this line or that and how to voice such and such a phrase against it's counter theme etc. It doesn't sound too good yet.

Tonight I tried to play some of it without the music: I didn't get past the first line. I will though, and when I do I will sound better again. Then I will work on the stumbling blocks, wherever they may be.

Once all the notes are thoroughly under the fingers then I will really concentrate on how I want the phrasing and articulation to go - for example building to a crescendo in the penultimate line (in resonance with the music itself) is common. At the end of that, eventually, I expect it to sound reasonable.

I will probably play it regularly for a week or two but I'm never going to perform it - I'm learning it for the technique and the pleasure, so once I've "got it" I'll then move on; probably to P&F No 17 from Bk1 of TWTC, on this years grade 8 list.

You ask "Do you take it section by section or voice by voice or both". The answer is either, whichever seems appropriate. Sometimes you don't really appreciate where the voices go until you're already familiar with the piece, particularly in the more complex fugues. I believe some by Bach (and at least one by Shostakovic) are in 5 or more parts/voices: Untangling them in advance isn't as easy as it might be. Sometimes sections run into one another and (as in the example above) the only realistic division into sections is "first half" and "second half", which isn't terribly useful.

What I do find is that studying, learning and playing these things is immensely rewarding. Occasionally the result is something that might even be worth listening to!

Have fun!

I'd be inclined to just learn the notes first too and become semi-familiar with it as a whole. Then I'd pinpoint all the subject entries and make sure they were clear - whether by dipping at the end of the previous phrase in that hand/part, by keeping down the other part, by playing slightly more legato, or by coming in a little louder - though it's tempting to just start hammering each entry out louder than the previous one! How hard I'd work at it depends on what it's for; if it's a fairly simple thing for an organ voluntary that they're all going to yak through I wouldn't stress myself out too much, but I would think that an examiner would be wanting clarity in the phrasing of the seperate parts. LISTENING really hard to the parts as you play them helps - sounds a bit obvious, but do really listen to what each part is doing individually rather than just hear it as a whole.

My initial approach would be to explore the tonal structure of the fugue and structural devices such as imitation. Find out whether the 'answer' to the orginal subject theme is in the dominant or subdominant, and where the countersubject begins. I think listening for these as tonal landmarks will help decisions about how loud or soft to play each entry. Hours of practice !

Thanks for all the responses so far. Interesting to see the diversity of approach.
Here is a link I also found in the meantime which has some interesting points:

http://www.serve.com/marbeth/fugues.html

I use a pipeline to learn fugue:

Stage 1) Right-hand on its own
Stage 2) Left-hand on its own
Stage 3) Hands together, slowly and in meticulous detail
Stage 4) Speed up

I feed the piece two bars at a time through the pipeline, working on the stages in parallel to keep the process varied. So, denoting what I'm doing for each chunk of time:

• Bars 1+2 RH
• Bars 1+2 LH, Bars 3+4 RH
• Bars 1+2 Together, Bars 3+4 LH, Bars 5+6 RH
• Bars 1+2 Speed up, Bars 3+4 together, Bars 5+6 LH, Bars 7+8 RH
• Bars 1 to 4 speed up, Bars 5+6 together, Bars 7+8 LH, bars 9+10 RH
• Bars 1 to 6 speed up, Bars 7+8 together.......

until eventually the whole piece is up to speed. I find it is important to learn fugue in a structured manner, with attention to detail at each point: when two voices are in one hand, are the right notes being held? If there's a tricky section, I will slow it down to the point of stupidity and reduce it to 'move this finger to there and that one to there' until my hands can do that bit in slow motion, then build it back up.

Importantly, there's also a pre-processing stage. Spot the subject entries (or get them off the Internet), and decide how you're going to articulate them. Then, aim to have them all with the same articulation. Also, if you have the AB edition, read the notes in the back of the book - better now than to find out later a trick that would have helped no end, or that one has got the wrong end of the stick.

Some great advice has been given here.

How about this for a break:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1ain4qftoM

That's fascinating in it's own right BUT it does beg the question:

Does it help to know the process of writing a fugue when you are trying to learn to play one?

For my part I think it probably does (or would), not least because if you know the rules you can have a better idea of where it's going to go. Rather like learning to sing a song - easier, for me at least, in English rather than, say, Japanese, because the words make sense to me in English.

What grade piano do you start to get fugal stuff to deal with?

Is there something about fugue that makes it scarier to learn than other things?

T.

Depends on your teacher to some extent I suppose.
I hadn't really done much in that line until after my grade 8 when my teacher started me with a couple of 2 part inventions before moving on to the 3 part Sinfonias.
This has been interrupted for most of this year as I'm sidetracking to do an accompanying exam.

Bach's 2 part inventions start to come in at about grade 5-7; The sinfonias (used to be known as 3 part inventions) seem to start at about grade 6-8. TWTC grade 8 - LRSM

Ah. That makes more sense now. If piano doesn't get fugues in the early grades, I can see why it seems like a daunting thing.

I'm quite happy with fugue (as a concept - would take me quite a while to get my fingers round the more complicated ones!) and am used to playing contrapuntal and polyphonic textures in general. Whereas more piano-specific stuff scares me - sustain pedal, anything with big arpeggios, etc.
But you get polyphonic textures right from the start with organ, and fugues from about 3 onwards, so by the time you get anywhere close to the really big and complicated ones, you've been doing the same sort of thing at a lower level for ages - it doesn't just suddenly appear out of nowhere.

I wonder why they don't include simple fugal stuff much earlier for piano? It would make it much easier for people when they got to the harder ones later on.

T.

I highlight the voices in the fugue with a highlighter pen. I find this helps particularly when the voices are hidden in between the hands. If you do not want to highlight your actual book then try photocopying it first then highlighting the voices on the photocopy.

There isn't a set repertoire that everybody teaches.
There's far too much music out there at all levels for everyone to stick to the same things.
Some will if they know anything suitable I'm sure but only in among other pieces in different styles I think.

And fugues are not to everybody's taste! It could be argued that a fugue can only be 'enjoyed' by the musically well-educated, whether they're playing it or listening to it. Students in early stages of learning want a more immediate type of satisfaction from their music-making, in the same way that a young art student won't appreciate certain types of painting before he understands the complexities in them. A fugue may seem unneccessarily pretentious, delving too far into academia and leaving the essence of 'music' behind. I wonder....

I do voices separately, then hands, then maybe two out of three voices just to confuse myself, and then hands together.
Though I did start learning fugues at a rather early stage, maybe around age 9. Confused the ###### out of me, they did.

This seems to be a well regarded order.
I have now also got my highlighters into action.

When starting with the voices separately, do you

1) just focus on forming the horizontal line and understanding the notes or
2) do you first work out a fingering that works well for the line but independently of the other parts and then go in and modify it as required when working hands separate, or
3) do you take the other voice(s) into account already when starting with voices separately to devise a total fingering?

The second point above is the reason why I launch in with both hands and all parts to begin with before I take it apart again. If a part moves between the hands I think it's important to get a feel for that early on, otherwise it may always sound as if it's being shared between the hands. I don't think there's any black and white rule here. Some people will learn the parts first, some will learn the hands first, but there are places where you'll probably need to start with a combination of both!

I deal parts shared between hands by playing the necessary extra notes when doing hands separately practice - playing the RH on its own, for instance, but adding the necessary LH notes that make up the gaps with the voices. I then aim for consistent articulation, weighting etc. within that.

I'd listen to YAP rather than me! I'm not a very methodical person in my practice! I get there, but I tend to pick out awkward bits at random for individual treatment as I go along, as the notion takes me, and I like to keep an eye on the 'whole' picture. But if you're wanting to be methodical, I'd follow YAP's advice.

I was taught to work out in intricate detail every bit of fingering for each hand first to make everything as pure legato as possible - this often involved some quite complex finger-swapping and strange crossing finger techniques etc. - then practise each hand separately until it was absolutely perfect and bomb-proof before putting the hands together, and dropping the speed to snail's pace to ensure there was never an incorrect fingering anywhere..........

. . . but "pure legato" is wrong in general for Baroque counterpoint. Also the "complex finger-swapping and strange crossing finger techniques" can involve both hands, so practicing hands separately may not be a help.

However, it all goes to show "there's more than one way to skin a cat!"

Yes and no - there's a lot to be said for being able to play it legato first before deciding on articulation. The correct fingers for playing legato are often the same good fingers to use whilst playing staccato - smooth joins avoid false accents etc.

It's a general practice technique - play legato staccato, and staccato legato .



If it reduces to muscle memory in each hand though, 'slowed to the point of stupidity' as I wrote in an earlier post, it doesn't impact that much when hands are put together .

Reading this thread makes me feel the same way I do when I am studying a fugue: I am getting more and more confused but feel anyway that I am making progress in understanding.

Thanks.

Don't learn the parts sepeparately with a fingering that only works for them because then you'll have to re-learn the whole thing when you try to put two or more parts together. Work out what fingering you will play those notes in for the final piece, when all the parts are together, and use that for practising the individual lines. Otherwise the extra practice that you do on the separate lines won't really help: you're practising the wrong thing! The notes are there, but the muscle memory and correct fingering won't be reinforced, meaning you're effectively learning a new piece when you come to use the correct fingering (or worse you're having to un-learn the wrong fingering and then learn the correct one).

A slight deviation - hope you don't mind, imlovinit!

Has anybody played (well) the G Major Fugue which I think is in Book 2 of WTC? It's the one with the short Prelude, anyway - less than a minute long. The Prelude is fairly easy; I've never tackled the fugue at all and don't have the music, but it sounds fantastic and I'd love to have a go some day. Is it as horrific as it sounds to learn?

Sorry - should have said in some fugues a pure legato is not necessary - especially the faster fugues, but there are also slower ones which do sound best as legato as possible. And often in the same hand you have to play (for example) the subject legato against a detached counter-subject which still may require awkward fingering to achieve. But either way, the fingering should be 100 % correct every time, and that often needs separate practice to really reinforce it.......And I should add that it was my piano teacher who taught me this way of learning fugues - and he's an international concert pianist who's also an extremely good teacher......

WRITE IN EXTRA FINGERING

And if you put it all away for a while - don't rub it out!!! (Been there and done that, and it's like going back to the drawing board when you ressurect it.)

I am working on the Prelude and Fugue from Shostakovich for the Grade 8 exam.
I had hi-lighted the three voices, marked the entry of the themes, chosen fingerings that worked for both voices when two were in one hand and strived for a legato as specified.

Had my first lesson on it today which was interesting. Lots of revisions to the fingerings I had chosen.
Although the piece says "sempre legato", it isn't practical to play with a pure finger legato like one would on a Bach fugue, and it is also modern music not Baroque although composed using a fugue form, so the breakthrough from my lesson was to focus on making the individual voices retain their identity and sing and flow with appropriate use of pedal without obsessing about a finger legato which is physically impossible anyway. This has made things a bit easier. It is such beautiful music. You can hear that Shostakovich also wrote for films.

No one has suggested singing each of the voices as you learn them, also of course singing one voice while playing others is a particularly good challenge! Really makes sure you know exactly what's going one.

I'm sure that would work wonders if I could sing...
The thought of hitting the right note, as well as phrasing it properly against what my fingers were doing at the time just doesn't bear thinking about!