The beginning???





(Just kidding - but I had to say it)

C minor book 1, G major book 2 I think are the easiest.

Master Bach and you will be able to play anything.

dear xixing:
first and foremost, welcome!

you already answer yourself. the method of playing soprano and bass, and "let the middle voice take care of itself", is not a proper one. when playing a fugue, you must control every single line, which includes phrasing, articulation, sound, touch, and so on. btw, it's exponential: to have this sort of control over one line, it's OK; two voices, average; three voices, difficult; four voices, well... (five voices and more, one need an extra brain to manage... ).

so, that said, let me propose a very helpful way of practice: choose a voice and play it, alone, until you manage it perfectly (with the same fingering you'd use when playing all voices together). this kind of practice in the inner voices is particularly important, because you will need to switch from one hand to the other all the time, but play it without a noticeable break notwithstanding.

step two, and that's the one i love the most, is to play all possible combinations. in a four voiced fugue, it means: 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 2-3, 2-4, 3-4, 1-2-3, and so on, until playing 1-2-3-4 with perfect control. of course, it takes a looooong time to achieve, but the effort is fully rewarded.

best!

...and "let the middle voice take care of itself", is not a proper one. when playing a fugue, you must control every single line, which includes phrasing, articulation, sound, touch, and so on. ...

Oh, I see...
  It means I've to work on those I've done before, again...

so, that said, let me propose a very helpful way of practice: choose a voice and play it, alone, until you manage it perfectly (with the same fingering you'd use when playing all voices together). this kind of practice in the inner voices is particularly important, because you will need to switch from one hand to the other all the time, but play it without a noticeable break notwithstanding.

step two, and that's the one i love the most, is to play all possible combinations. in a four voiced fugue, it means: 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 2-3, 2-4, 3-4, 1-2-3, and so on, until playing 1-2-3-4 with perfect control. of course, it takes a looooong time to achieve, but the effort is fully rewarded.

Wow! It really takes a lot of time and effort. But,  I'll try.

... I've seen where people color-coded the separate voices...

I guess this is what I'll do:
I'll photostate the score and highlight different voices with different colour first, then use the method suggested by gerry to practice.

  Thank you thank you very much!

dear xixing:
best luck with those attempts. as i wrote above, you'll listen the difference practicing like that for some time.

by the way, "listen" is really the word. it's very easy to play fugues in a very mechanical way. you can even fake it, if you play the subject louder than the rest. but that's not music after all and bach's fugues have so much to give, that the effort really pay itself.

best!

dear xixing:

It is sad and shameful to say that I used to play mechanically, didn't realize what music is. After years of practicing in that way, it is difficult to change. To play "musically" becomes even tougher as my listening skill is really poor.
Though, I'm trying.

i think that almost everyone has this challenge in some point. it should be a commmitment of every teacher, but that's far from what actually happens. thus, there is one day that you realize: what is music if not...er...music?
do you know plato's allegory of the cave? well, without pushing it too far, that's what happens. so, you really need some time to get acquainted with this way of playing.

Am I right?

... If yes, then the dynamics really adds a lot more difficulty on the fugue.

Regards.

yes, you are. at least, that's the way i understand the whole stuff. notice that there a lot more than dynamics: try to play all voices at the same volume, and distinguish one of them only by a strong articulation (let's say, play staccato only the tenor). it makes the voice stand in the front, does it not? then, you have dynamics, agogics, articulation, touch and every possible combination. of course, it can easily led to disaster, but experimenting is fundamental, even if sometimes you end up with a complete mess...

it makes me remember a master class with a brilliant pianist, mrs. tali morgulis. she was talking about a work by liszt, with a passage where the right hand played chords, all of them three notes. so, she played the passage in several versions: with the top voice proeminent, then with the middle voice, then the lower one and, finally, with three equal voices. it's astonishing to listen and notice the difference. a single phrase can mean different things. if you telescope this notion to a whole fugue, well, you really have a long, long term of study and sound research, until you reach your own voice, so to speak.

to myself, that's what really makes me play everyday, hours a day. to play more complex stuff or to play fast are two little pieces of the puzzle: to play a single fugue with real personality...that's a challenge!

best!

dear slobone:

gerryjay, that's absolutely the best way to practice, and that's what I (try to) do. It helps to think of a voice in a fugue (or anywhere else really) as a "voice", that is a vocal line. When you play them separately you will just naturally find yourself phrasing them in the same way that you would if you were singing. Then hopefully when you put them back together you can retain some of that feeling.

yes, yes! very important to point that out, because singing is a wonderful way of understand any melody and give life to it.

But I'm sure you'd agree that when you actually play all the voices together, it's not always best to make them as independent from each other as possible. There are certainly places where one of the voices doesn't carry an actual melody, just some phrase fragments meant to support the other voices. It's important to pay attention to what's going on vertically as well as horizontally 

you're right. anyway, i didn't want to mean that voices should be independent, but that you must have individual control of each one. furthermore, what you say about the vertical dimension is fundamental, because in a fugue the coordination between voices is as important as each individual voice. in a fugue, the sum is greater than the parts. in a bach fugue, even more! this is the reason to my way of practice: each voice alone, then two by two, etc.

best!

I started with no. 12 in F minor from Book 2 and it has worked out fairly well, but I was choosing from a syllabus, so I didn't have any other options, and there may be better starting pieces.

No, I think that's an excellent one to start with. The fugue is very manageable. In fact it's not very fugue-like at all, it's more like a 3-part invention.

And the prelude is one of Bach's most famous pieces. Take it at a relaxed pace with a lot of "bounce".

The Swingle Singers recorded it, one of my favorites of theirs, but alas I can't find it on youtube...

p/s: my playing does sound different after practicing in the suggested way.

dear xixing:
i'm really glad to hear that!
best wishes,
gerry.