Learning fugues

[danielbraga]

Hi folks.I have been searching effecient ways of learning fugues, but one thing has come particularly to mind.People generally say:

1.Study motifs,counter-subjects,...

2.Learn voices separate

3.Learn  ALL possible voice combinations

4.Put it all together

The problem comes in this third step.When we are talking about 5 parts fugues, is it really needed to learn ALL 31 possible combinations????This seems crazyness to me!I won't even comment on the 6+15+20+15+6+1=63!!! possible voice combinations of Ricecar a 6.

[j_menz]

Are you trying to learn a specific fugue, or are you trying to fully understand fugal composition.  Point 3 seems useful for the latter, but not generally useful for the former.

Of course, an understanding of the form, both theoretical and practical, will aid your appreciation and possibly your performance; bur that is something you need to develop by playing a lot of them as much as by analysing the options used in one.

[brogers70]

Hi, I think that learning all possible voice combinations is a bit over the top, um pouco demais. What I do is copy out the fugue by hand, with a separate staff for each voice. Then I listen to a recording many times until I hear each voice separately. Then I play each voice separately. Then I learn hands separate, using the final fingering I plan to use. This is the place where people say you should do all combinations of the voices, but I never succeeded in doing that; the voices change between hands and it's quite hard to stick to the final fingering when you are leaving one voice out of each hand. So I work mostly on hands separate. If there are spots where a particular interaction between two voices is interesting, I will work on that, but mostly I work on individual hands, trying to get the voicing and articulation of the separate lines within one hand distinct. Then I learn it hands together, a few bars at a time. Then, once it's all together, I go back and play individual hands and voices separately working on the shaping of individual lines. Then, I put it back together again and hope it had come out alright.

[j_menz]

OK, I completely misunderstood what point 3 was. 

You have two options:

1) learn all the possible combinations; or

2) learn to hear, play and control each voice while they are together.

1 is probably quicker in the short term; 2 is the only way to really do it, and avoids the "hope it works" that brogers mentioned.

[danielbraga]

Well so I guess brogers approrach works best.Learning all combinations seems ineffective .By the way, look at the wonderful interpretation this guy made of Ricecar a 6:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm-okHwrnzI

Found it wonderful , although pedal harms it a bit.Learning this piece is my long(VERY)-term project.There is something just fascinating about this piece(other than the 6 voices ).