How do I know if a teacher is good at teaching Bach Fugue?

[nyiregyhazi]

It is possible to hear more than one voice and melodic line at the same time. That is the point of contrapuntal music after all.

Oh... don't tell me you can't! Oh dear!...

I didn't. I pointed out that simultaneously hearing more than one thing at once is by nature vertical. To listen only on a horizontal dimension is to hear only one voice. These terms are not subjective, regardless of whether they have been bastardised now. They come from musical notation. Time flows horizontally and simultaneous notes are heard vertically, in line with how notation operates. To hear two notes at once is to be hearing vertically, by definition. And, no, that doesn't mean you cannot also be listening horizontally, unless you live in a universe of fallacious polarisation. It simply means you're hearing two simultaneous events.

Music is never without both horizontal and vertical. The idea that simply because one is important, we should have to put the other aspect down (in some kind of curious smear campaign) is baffling to me.

[nyiregyhazi]

Nobody said anything about her being unaware of vertical issue. That is another strawman construction of yours.

It is how she thinks about the whole piece that is highlighted here.

Even she characterises the music as .... horizontal! Hmmm....

Okay, so she used this labelling. What she didn't say is that the classical period invented the vertical or that it is not also an important issue in this music. If you can find an argument in which she downplays vertical issues altogether, that will be a lot of relevant than one in which she uses a label in passing. If she's aware of harmony and interactions between voices, she also thinks vertically.

The irony about the interplay between horizontal and vertical is how intrinsically interrelated they are. Everyone is so busy slagging off the idea of vertical awareness that they forget that a pianist who is not vertically aware is by definition not aware of all voices at once. Association between voices is vertical. Thus any awareness of multiple voices is founded equally on vertical awareness. Why are all these arguments based on presenting complementary issues as if they were conflicting issues?

For less experienced pianists, not having vertical awareness often means missing an overheld note, among other faults. Which means that the horizontal line that was still meant to be present has become every bit as screwed up as the vertical arrival that should have happened.

[nyiregyhazi]

Here's a quote from John Elliot Gardiner:

'There's a similar dichotomy in the music. For me it's like the intersection of two planes. The horizontal plane is the melodic and contrapuntal writing, the vertical plane is the dance rhythm based on a basso continuo of incredible elasticity and, buoyancy. And it's the intersection of these two that's so gripping and entrancing to the listener at so many levels.

I have no idea why so many people have to argue as if horizontal and vertical awareness were contradictory. It makes about as much sense as a child who has a playstation and thus has to slag off the Xbox. Although, in this case, they're not even separate things but part of a single whole. It's madness to slag off the dimension upon which harmony occurs and voices interact with each other, simply because you also need to have horizontal links. And it's also madness to see homophonic writing solely vertically- as if it doesn't need to involve coherent horizontal phrases, simply because there are lots of notes.