How to learn my first Bach fugue.

[bernadette60614]

I asked my teacher to always assign me Bach...I love to listen to Bach and I find Bach wonderfully, awfully, sublimely challenging.

She has assigned me my first fugue.  6 measures in and my head is splitting!

I'm doing the traditional hands alone/hands together, but I can't seem to find, let alone, follow "the line."

Any advice (be kind!) would be appreciated.

[quantum]

Which one are you learning?

Have you studied any of the Inventions/Sinfonias?

Polyphonic music tends to demand a sense of kinesthetic understanding, cognitive understanding, and aural awareness all at the same time, and more specifically, in the early stages of learning pieces.  In homophonic texture, such as frequently encountered in romantic music, the separation of hands also tends to align with the organization of the music: the RH may play the melody, the LH plays the accompaniment.  Thus it is easy to follow the lines because you can clearly visualize it when you play hands separately.  However, polyphonic music is not like this, where foreground and background elements may take place in any hand, in any part of the keyboard, even divided between two hands.  

Playing polyphonic music hands separate as written in the score will generally get you familiar with the kinesethetic movements, but not necessarily the conceptual understanding of the music.  You may need to isolate the individual lines and play them in order to hear them.  Don't worry about using actual performance fingering because your goal would be to learn the line, not how you will eventually play the piece.  

Becoming familiar with the basic elements of a fugue will help.  Learn about subjects and how to identify them along with their various transformations.  


You may wish to look at the fugue chapter in the following book.  It is a very detailed book so you don't have to dig too deep at this point.  Just read the first few pages and skim the chapter to see what goes into writing a fugue.  
https://archive.org/details/counterpointappl00goetuoft

Here is a breakdown of fugue anatomy, and some of the devices you may encounter in fugues.
https://www2.nau.edu/tas3/fugueanatomy.html

Things you can start to work on at the moment:
Identify the subject (and answer), and all occurrences of it in the fugue.  Mark with pencil if you need to.
Identify the basic structure of the fugue: exposition, developmental episode, and coda.  
At the piano, play in isolation all occurrences of the subject you located in the score.

[marijn1999]

Fugues are incredibly complex (not hard) to learn. The right approach will make sure that you won't miss out on anything that's encountered in the music and also make sure you will learn it in a way that you truly understand what's going on in the music.

Even though the approach for polyphonic music is generally the same for whatever piece it is, it is important for us to know which fugue you're learning in order to give specific advice.

BW,
marijn

[brogers70]

I like to copy the fugues out by hand on a separate staff for each voice. Then I listen to a recording meany times, each time trying to hear just one of the voices. Then I sing along with each voice. Then I learn hands separate, making sure that when two voices are in one hand I hear them separately. Then hands together. Some people advocate learning each voice separately with the fingering you'll use when you put everything together, and then playing every possible combination of two voices - I just find that confusing and it does not help me much. But copying it out by hand really helps me understand what's going on; you see all the entrances, inversions, augmentations, all the fugal devices that can be a bit obscured when it's printed on two staves for piano.

[109natsu]

I agree with quantum 100%. Can't say more. Subjects and counter-subjects are always important in Bach. Bring them out. Also, don't just think about playing the notes, but also picking them up precisely. The hardest part about fugues, in my opinion, in terms of technique, is playing multiple voices in one hand. Each of voices cannot lack musicality just because it is being played with some other voices.

Fugues are incredibly complex (not hard) to learn. The right approach will make sure that you won't miss out on anything that's encountered in the music and also make sure you will learn it in a way that you truly understand what's going on in the music.
Even though the approach for polyphonic music is generally the same for whatever piece it is, it is important for us to know which fugue you're learning in order to give specific advice.

Difficulty on the fugue depends on the number of voices... For example, that five voice fugue (C# minor in Book I) is a night mare, but 3 voices fugues are okay.

Are you also doing the prelude? and good luck on your first fugue! It is good that you like Bach, because that is not something that you can learn.