Bach: French suite no 3, fingering problems

[brianvds]

Years ago, I taught myself piano by playing exam pieces: when I could play the pieces for a grade, I would get the book for the next grade and so on. In the grade 4 book, I ran into the minuet from Bach's French suite no 3. It had only the minuet, not the trio, and this always bothered me, because one really should play the trio as well before da capo-ing the minuet. :-)

I am now trying to remedy that, but I find the trio absolutely monstrously difficult. Before starting my specific questions about it, I should perhaps first ask this: given that I can only play at around grade 4 or 5, should I attempt this trio at all, or is it so way out of my league that I'm just going to torture myself?

Here are some of my specific problems, marked in the score with numbers:



1. I can't make sense of this bit: the E should be sustained for the whole bar, but before the end of the bar it is played again (presumably by a different voice, but there is only one keyboard!). How does one do that? What on earth is Maestro Johann Sebastian on about here?

2. With which hands/fingers do I play those few notes? I can't work out how to sustain that F while playing the other notes.

3. Similar problem here: I cannot work out which fingers or indeed even which hand to assign the notes in the treble clef to.

4. And same thing here. Which hands/fingers should be used for which voices? I find this all but impossible to play at ANY tempo - it is not that I struggle to play it smoothly; I cannot work out how it is at all possible to play for anyone with fewer than three or four hands plus assorted tentacles. :-)

5. Same thing for this bar and the two or three following it: I cannot work out how to sustain the notes that should be sustained while playing the other ones simultaneously.

I am reluctant to go see if there are YouTube videos of someone playing the piece; you never know if THEY are doing it correctly!

[landru]

Welcome to the world of figuring out Bach! Every pianist has run into these issues and they have to solve them. You are correct that it all boils down to the issue of voices - Bach is writing "abstractly" for these voices but your job as a pianist is to bring them out.

1. Yes, the E is held for the whole measure, but you have to let go of it and quickly press it again for the top voice. You can hold it for a quarter note if you like for the rest of the measure, but only if it feels right for you (IMO).

2. The top F# is first played with 4, then the G with 5, and the F# with 4 again. If you can't do the full octave stretch from F# to C# to F# with fingers 4 to 1, then you need to quickly switch your 4th finger off of the F# and replace with your 5th, all the while keeping the key depressed. This is a skill you will need a lot of for Bach. The cascading arpeggio technique is much loved in Baroque music as well.

3. The notes can all be done in the right hand. Again, you may not be starting out with the correct finger on the D# from the previous measure, but I would try to start out with 5 on D#, 3 on B, then 2 on A, 1 on G, and back to 2 on the F#. The "counterintuitive" 2 on the F# is something that can help a lot with Bach.

4. I think that the left hand can pick up the E and G quarter notes in the first measure, and the #FGAG and so on. Keeping 5 on the bass clef A, 3 on E, 1 on G, 3 on F#, 2 on G, 1 on A and so on. Remember, these are fingerings that I would use for my hand - you might feel better with different fingerings.

5. Keeping the sustain with the 5 finger is a technique you'll need a lot. Just do it slow and don't force your hand or really tense it up to reach it. Your hand will eventually be very natural at keeping one finger on a key while the others play. The key is to plan out how the other fingers will have to be used. I usually figure out where the highest note is going to be played and provisionally say "That's where the thumb is going to have to end up!" and work out from both ends where the fingers have to be placed. If you don't have fingerings in the score, sometimes it's a lot of trial and error, but you are learning a lot about the music along the way.

Good Luck!

[brianvds]

Thanks for the feedback! Bach is one of those composers who only writes for real fans of music: his music does not look obviously difficult on the page, and it frequently doesn't really sound overtly virtuosic either. Thus is it not for musicians mainly interested in display. :-)

But it is so beautiful and interestingly intricate that it is well worth trying to figure it out. Thanks for the advice; I will have to go try it out for a week or two and see how it goes before I report back.

It seems to me that before one even begins to really practice a piece like this, one should first of all spend much time deciding on a workable fingering scheme. The problem is that even the right fingering feels completely wrong under the fingers! E..g. in my point number three, I would have to go check to make sure, but I think I did try to play it the way you suggest, and then abandoned it because it felt utterly awkward and wrong. :-)

Well, I guess I should continue plugging away at it. I'm beginning to think that if you can play Bach, you can play anything at all, and that his music makes for the best studies of any kind for developing particular types of techniques, especially such things as independence of the hands and fingers. And unlike many a set of etudes by lesser composers, his music is beautiful to boot, and an absolute joy to play once you have mastered it.

[landru]

You're welcome. The other things to remember with Bach is that he really loves melodic "cells", little patterns of 3, 4, 5 or more notes that he literally plays around with. It really helps when you are trying to figure out the fingering to identify these patterns and try to use the same fingering. In this trio, an example would be in measure 6, the top voice is D-C#-E-D-C#-B, the same pattern occurs in measure 11 but with different notes! And if you look further you can see the same pattern slightly modified in other measures.

The other thing about studying and practicing Bach is that he sounds great even at the slowest tempos. That really helps! And you are correct that getting the right fingering down before you do a lot of practicing really helps. As far as the right fingering feeling "wrong". I don't know what to say - sometimes it feels wrong because it is the wrong fingering for you, but sometimes it feels wrong because it is a new kind of fingering and you aren't used to it (Schumann loves to do that to me).

[brianvds]

The other thing about studying and practicing Bach is that he sounds great even at the slowest tempos. That really helps!

Yes, I have noticed that. Also, his music sounds good on any instrument - its beauty seems to lie largely in the structure of the music itself rather than specific timbres. One cannot imagine something like, say, Debussy's solo piano works played on a xylophone or a set of penny whistles. It wouldn't work! With Bach it does, as long as it is played well.

And you are correct that getting the right fingering down before you do a lot of practicing really helps. As far as the right fingering feeling "wrong". I don't know what to say - sometimes it feels wrong because it is the wrong fingering for you, but sometimes it feels wrong because it is a new kind of fingering and you aren't used to it (Schumann loves to do that to me).

Well, I have been so busy for a few days now that I did not have time for any practice, so I have yet to go try out your fingering suggestions. Will do so this coming week, I hope.

I suppose I am fairly used to Classical period music, where much comes down to relatively simple and straightforward figurations in the left hand and equally straightforward melodic writing in the right. It may sometimes require fast fingers and much finesse, but it never feels like your fingers are being tied into knots.

I am not at all used to this sort of polyphonic writing, which is perhaps why all of it "feels wrong" under the hands. But I guess it is high time I got used to it. I have this feeling that Bach really greatly enhances one's technique.

I don't know a thing about music theory, and this may hamper my ability to understand Bach's work. On the other hand, playing a lot of it may well help to develop my intuition for theoretical concepts. It's an ongoing adventure. :-)

[brianvds]

Well, last evening, while taking out the trash, I misjudged the steps down from my apartment and badly twisted my ankle, so now I cannot operate the pedal on my digital piano. Thus a good excuse to flip the switch to the harpsichord voice and work on my Bach. :-)

Those fingering you suggested seem to be playable, though I still find the piece monstrously difficult. There seem to be some very rapid jumps of the right hand involved, that I struggle to get right even playing at glacially slow tempo. Perhaps practice will sort it out. Bach pieces somehow always seem all but unplayable in the beginning. :-)