Learning individual voices in a fugue... ?

[m1469]

I am definitely an advocate of learning and memorizing each voice of a fugue individually, and "seperately", however, I am wondering something related to this... (I am also melding a whole bunch of things together in my head)

When learning contrapuntal works, is there any fundamental reason why a person should learn each voice part in it's entirety (at the piano), for the whole piece, before joining them together in any way?

A person learns and memorizes the subject in all voices in all entries first, then the countersubject like-wise.  Why not just join voices together for those parts right away if they can indeed be played individually from memory?

It does one well to be able to play voices seperately by memory in their entirety, but does their individual entirety have to come first?

I am kinda thinking not, though this is not how I was musically "raised".  Would this just mess things up?

I am assuming that this kind of work is accompanied by obsessive listening, analyzing of the score and mental pracitce, so one has an understanding of where the voices go independently.

Any thoughts?


m1469

[Bob]

I don't think there is a "right" or "wrong" way for anything.  I depends on what the teacher wants, what the students wants, what level the student is at, etc.

I played a fugue before I even knew what one was.  I didn't know about subjects, the different voices, etc.  I still learned it and played it.  I learned it straight through, probably hands separate at first and then hands together.  I'm not saying that's a great way to do it or that I would do that now, but I played it that way then.  Back then I didn't know what voices were or even what a chord was.  I only vaguely understood these ideas.  I still enjoyed it, played it all right, but I certainly didn't have the knowledge behind what I was playing. 

So I don't think there is a correct way for anything.  How something is learned depends on a lot of factors.


https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php?topic=7721

[anda]

i have a matusalemic "colleague" piano teacher who makes her students memorize all the voices individually. she also requires them to be able to play from memory any kind of 2 or 3 voices grouping (i.e., in a 4-voices fugue: 1+2, 1+3, 1+4, 2+3, 2+4, 3+4, 1+2+3, 1+2+4, 2+3+4).

personally, i find this quite useless. i ask from my students exactly what i ask from myself: practice separately the voices, practice all possible voice-groupings, but memorize all voices together. i'm not saying "this is how you should do" - but this is what i do.

[m1469]

personally, i find this quite useless.

I think the main point behind memorizing voices seperately and idividually is to aid in overall memorization.  You do not find this step of memorizing voices individually, helpful in this regard ? 

I am not certain myself, but my general attitude at times is, 'one will not regret having taken as many preparatory steps as possible in learning a piece, however, one will indeed regret having not taken sufficient preparatory steps.'

I suppose the question then is, what is sufficient (as Bob is maybe talking about)?

I guess it is highly individual.


m1469

[Bob]

I would ask "What is possible?"    What are all the different things I might learn about a piece?  Then I can decide what things I want to learn from a very complete list of possibilities.

I would agree it's very individual.  How a person learns would have an impact.  It might be very important for one person to be able to see each part of the score in their mind, while another might want to be able to imagine their hands moving.

And practical -- how much time will you spend?  If it's for a performance, how important is the performance? 

If you really wanted to go nuts -- why not learn to improvise a fugue?  That would certainly help your performance of a fugue, wouldn't it?  Or write a fugue yourself in the style of Bach? 

I suppose you just have to set your own goals and limits.

[m1469]

I would ask "What is possible?"    What are all the different things I might learn about a piece?  Then I can decide what things I want to learn from a very complete list of possibilities.

I would agree it's very individual.  How a person learns would have an impact.  It might be very important for one person to be able to see each part of the score in their mind, while another might want to be able to imagine their hands moving.

And practical -- how much time will you spend?  If it's for a performance, how important is the performance? 

If you really wanted to go nuts -- why not learn to improvise a fugue?  That would certainly help your performance of a fugue, wouldn't it?  Or write a fugue yourself in the style of Bach? 

I suppose you just have to set your own goals and limits.

Yeah, okay, I think I'll go nuts... lol  .  I just went and tried to improvise a fugue... I think I still have ways to go  . 

Has anyone done this?  Don't be a closet fugue-improviser, share with "us" hungry spirits (me and my alter ego, and whomever else is interested).  You will give us some pointers... ?

Thanks a lot for your inputs.

m1469

[anda]

I am not certain myself, but my general attitude at times is, 'one will not regret having taken as many preparatory steps as possible in learning a piece, however, one will indeed regret having not taken sufficient preparatory steps.'

ok, i agree to disagree with myself memorizing individual voices in a fugue is not useless.

what i meant (and obviously did not manage to make myself clear, i'll try harder now) is: there should always be a balance between the amount of effort required by a practice method and the outcome (the benefits resulting from using that method). and, judging from this point of view, i simply cannot find it worth to memorize the voices individually: i find this method to be way too much time (and brain) consuming for what it delivers (hope you can understand my own personal english )

I suppose the question then is, what is sufficient (as Bob is maybe talking about)?

nothing. ever. it took me 20 years to realize, but now i know. it's never sufficient, but sometimes, if you work real well, it can be good enough (imho, of course)

I guess it is highly individual.

now, this is something i can wholeheartedly agree with 

best luck

[pianonut]

the fugue had it's humble beginnings in voice...so i read from my 'concise history of western music.'  "the chanson, breaking out of the form fixes, was cast in new shapes, and its texture was gradually pervaded by imitation.  hidden and esoteric structural devices, such as isorhythm and mensuration canon, gave way to transparent textures, principally that of overlapping fugal or imitative sections..."

i think a good start to hearing the voices is to listen to this kind of music in josquin's motets.  it is so cool!  you can understand, when you listen to a capella music the need for certain ranges (some more singable by you than others) and how they used to overlap much more in 'the old days' than when modern composers write.  we sometimes want to distinguish too much, whereas back then, you heard a blend of voices, but sometimes couldn't distinguish the overlapping.  this happens a lot still in bach, too, where he overlaps (and you need your color pencils to follow where he is going with each voice - and make sure you understand the differences and why they are heading certain directions - just for your own benefit).

poulenc is another favorite composer of mine - he was into renaissance music also, and wrote some beautiful beautiful motets.  i haven't read as much as i want to about zarlino, but it's a start in understanding how the fugue was talked about then (even if it doesn't say 'fugue' and says 'canon') madrigals would be next on the listening agenda.

just so you know, yes, i DO think one should try to learn all the voices (but when putting them together, not to make them stand out from each other, but blend).  entrances are what is important. 

after looking at my bach fugues a bit more, i realized that they are usually in common time (or cut time) like the mass and motet (duple measure) and never start on the beat (as preludes do sometimes).  you get the sense you are dealing with voices from the very beginning because of this.  there's the preparation for each voice to enter (besides the prep of the prelude).  it's almost as if bach is telling us (nowdays in our time) that this used to BE voice.  the prelude would be played on the organ and then the voices would come in singing the mass.  i think he was always thinking ahead to have music to use and play in church.

[earl]

Hi m1469,

I'm currently working on a fugue (WTC-I in E Major). I learned and memorized it as a 'normal' piece. Now I'm in the process of analyzing it as to subject, countersubject, free counterpoint sections, etc.

I think it's important to know all about what each voice is doing but I never considered memorizing each voice separately or be able to play any grouping of voices at will. (Wow!)

I actually like the idea but one problem comes up for me: a fugue that has more than 2 voices requires the performer to play the third (and fourth if there is one) voices with the available fingers of both hands as is feasible. And these voices may shift from one hand to another as the piece progresses. If one were to memorize individual voices would that be a hindrance to the performance memorization? In other words, one would play it differently with different fingerings, etc. when playing the voices alone versus playing all of them together as a complete performance.

For example, the fugue I'm learning is a 3 voice fugue. The middle voice shifts back and forth between the hands as necessary and I'm wondering if I would confuse myself by memorizing alternate fingerings in order to play the voices separately. (The middle voice would be the most affected. Maybe the soprano and bass wouldn't change that much.)

What do you think?

By the way m1469, this as well as all your other topics are very interesting and get me to thinking! Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Earl

[Bob]

How about how the voices interact? 

All the intervals between each voice combinations, the counterpoint rules, etc....


or the "process" of a fugue.  Here's the subject and you expect the answer a certain way.  Does that happen?  What happens after that?      I guess, what expecataions are set up in the piece?  Are those fulfilled?

[m1469]

Earl wrote :

I actually like the idea but one problem comes up for me: a fugue that has more than 2 voices requires the performer to play the third (and fourth if there is one) voices with the available fingers of both hands as is feasible. And these voices may shift from one hand to another as the piece progresses. If one were to memorize individual voices would that be a hindrance to the performance memorization? In other words, one would play it differently with different fingerings, etc. when playing the voices alone versus playing all of them together as a complete performance.

I would suggest using the exact same fingerings with HS as you use with HT.   Use both hands as needed for that voice, with the same fingering you would with hands together including the other voices, even when playing it alone.

By the way m1469, this as well as all your other topics are very interesting and get me to thinking! Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Thank you, Earl   

m1469

[m1469]

How about how the voices interact? 

All the intervals between each voice combinations, the counterpoint rules, etc....


or the "process" of a fugue.  Here's the subject and you expect the answer a certain way.  Does that happen?  What happens after that?      I guess, what expecataions are set up in the piece?  Are those fulfilled?

I think that nowadays there are more/different expectations for certain styles of pieces than there were when those styles were just coming about.  For example, people would probably expect more from a piece of music called a "fugue" today, than they did when fugues were first being written and were laying the foundation for what future generations would come to expect.

Similar to somebody expecting more from the word "electricity" now, than they did when it was first being discovered as such.

My attitude is that people only expect what they are trained to expect.  And when something goes along with what they were trained to expect, it of course fulfills their expectations.  If it does not follow what one was trained to expect, it might be called an "interesting" deviation from the "normal expectations".

Bob, are you wanting to know specific things about what exactly is expected within the structure of a fugue?


m1469

[Bob]

Specific things about a fugue?  Not really.  There's just so much to music that I can't get my mind around it.  Very complex.

I was just thinking that memorizing the individual voices helps.  So would memorizing how voice 1 interacts with voice 2, but then you could look at voice 1 in relation to the rest of the all the voices....  and on and on.   All this would help with memorizing and understanding the piece.

I remember something about Bach meaning for the inventions to be models for students to use to come up with their own pieces.  The point was to understand the process of developing the ideas.  Sounds like a great way to help solidify understanding of the piece, if there's time.  I don't think many people do that though.  They just treat them as another piece. 

[fnork]

Yeah, okay, I think I'll go nuts... lol  .  I just went and tried to improvise a fugue... I think I still have ways to go  . 

Has anyone done this?  Don't be a closet fugue-improviser, share with "us" hungry spirits (me and my alter ego, and whomever else is interested).  You will give us some pointers... ?

Thanks a lot for your inputs.

m1469

I think you should listen to some of Keith Jarretts soloimprovisations on piano. While he doesn't strictly improvise fugues, his playing is very contrapunctal and since he loves Bach and other baroque music, his improvisations are sometimes very baroque-sounding. Listen to the beginning of his "Paris concert" for instance - it sounds like something Bach could have written, yet this is improvised music from a concert in 1988. I saw Jarret live last year in Rome, which was a wonderful experience. In one of the pieces, he began playing something atonal but after 7 minutes or so the music started transforming from atonality to tonality, and all of a sudden he was playing some kind of two-part invention instead - somehow the piece sounded very baroque from that point and on, but still the harmonies he was using were very jazzy, with colourings (is that the right word?) that I'm sure Bach never even thought existed. Still, the piece sounded very much like something Bach could have played.

Perhaps I'll post it for you But as I said, I think you should listen to many of Jarretts solo concerts. They are always fantastic, and often very contrapunctal. Although he always knows how to bring out one voice while keeping the other voices in the background. I think that his contrapunctal playing has become better as he grows older, so the later concerts are usually better on that aspect - not to say that the old ones are bad. There's a great part in the famous "Köln concert" (in Part 2a), after a long part where he just jams on two chords, which is contrapunctal, with one voice in the right hand, and one voice answering in the left.

Check it out!

[m1469]

I think you should listen to some of Keith Jarretts soloimprovisations on piano. While he doesn't strictly improvise fugues, his playing is very contrapunctal and since he loves Bach and other baroque music, his improvisations are sometimes very baroque-sounding. Listen to the beginning of his "Paris concert" for instance - it sounds like something Bach could have written, yet this is improvised music from a concert in 1988. I saw Jarret live last year in Rome, which was a wonderful experience. In one of the pieces, he began playing something atonal but after 7 minutes or so the music started transforming from atonality to tonality, and all of a sudden he was playing some kind of two-part invention instead - somehow the piece sounded very baroque from that point and on, but still the harmonies he was using were very jazzy, with colourings (is that the right word?) that I'm sure Bach never even thought existed. Still, the piece sounded very much like something Bach could have played.

Perhaps I'll post it for you But as I said, I think you should listen to many of Jarretts solo concerts. They are always fantastic, and often very contrapunctal. Although he always knows how to bring out one voice while keeping the other voices in the background. I think that his contrapunctal playing has become better as he grows older, so the later concerts are usually better on that aspect - not to say that the old ones are bad. There's a great part in the famous "Köln concert" (in Part 2a), after a long part where he just jams on two chords, which is contrapunctal, with one voice in the right hand, and one voice answering in the left.

Check it out!

Okay, thanks very much for the helpful suggestions.  I think I will order Keith Jarrett soon, I also think I will order Jacques Loussier.  I am really excited ! 

Perhaps I'll post it for you

(*tongue hanging out and drool coming down the side of my mouth... lol *)

m1469

[faulty_damper]

The ability to sight-read the fugue is also of much benefit.  You do not get practice of sightreading if you take the voices out before learning it.  Sightread first, develop contrapuntal thinking afterwards.

[fnork]

The ability to sight-read the fugue is also of much benefit.  You do not get practice of sightreading if you take the voices out before learning it.  Sightread first, develop contrapuntal thinking afterwards.

could you explain a bit more - why do you think this is good? Because I'm not sure why.

[faulty_damper]

Generally, the ability to sightread is beneficial.  The ability to sightread contrapuntal music, not just playing harmonically, means that you can think in parts - you can follow the lines even as they intertwine.  This requires knowing the subject, the countersubjects, and episodes which should not be too hard because it is very straightforward - the subject starts first and the next voice doesn't come in until the subject is finished; the countersubject(s) starts when the next voice comes in; the episodes begin when no subjects are present (but subjects may enter once again).

Taking out the voices to learn them separately before putting them back in does not help develop the ability to sightread especially in 3 or more parts.  Sightreading is much more difficult in this manner because you must be very careful about your fingering, and when to hand off a voice to the other hand should its need occur.

There are two main difficulties about fugues.
1. contrapuntal attributes
2. playing it

Ultimately, it is the ability to play all parts with just two hands that matter.   In two part inventions, it is relatively simple - one hand for each voice.  But in three or more, it becomes ever more difficult to voice the voices.  Being able to sightread a fugue gives a good sense of what your hands can do.  If you take the voices out first, you will not encounter this problem until you get to the point when you have learned all the parts which is physically easy because there is little difficulty playing one line at a time.

Knowing the physical diffculties first is more important in being able to play it.  Similarly, it is like practicing the easy parts of a piece and neglecting the technically difficult parts until afterwards (e.g. Fur Elise: many can play the beginning well but most crumble in the middle section.)

After a first reading, the contrapuntal analysis can then be given its attention.  Writing out the voices indidually and playing them can help tremendously in understanding how the voices relate to each other.  This step is most beneficial to thinking in parts.  An example of this is in Bach's Art of Fugue.  In The Art of Fugue, the voices are written out in soprano, alto, tenor, and bass clefs and below them is the transcription for keyboard on the G and F clef.

[m1469]

If you really wanted to go nuts -- why not learn to improvise a fugue?   

Okay, I just have to say that I think I am getting fairly close to having the hang of this, perhaps 


I just got excited and had to post that 

[pianistimo]

has anyone played a double fugue?  like bach's?  wonder how messed up a brain gets then?  could a person speak afterwards?

just listened (on amazon) to lise de la salle play it.  wow.  it's really cool.  take a listen.

[quasimodo]

Not that I have a significant experience of fugues (I learned only 1 and a half, lol), but it doesn't seem that necessary to me to learn systematically each voice separately from the beginning to the end of the piece.

More important IMO is to identify all kind of patterns, that is :

- Motives (subject, countersubject and other "secondary" themes,
- Melodic and Contrapuntal schemes (inversions, augmentations, permutations etc)
- Chords (!) and harmonic progression
- Whatever else that make musical sense

Precisely, a fugue voice going separately doesn't make that much sense and I would bet the composer didn't write them separately so why would I learn them so ?

I totally concur with Earl's post about the matter. And actually, as I learn the fugue, chunk after chunk, HS and sometimes even isolating one or more voices, at the end I learned both the piece and each of its voices.

[rc]

Not terribly experience either... But I think that learning each voice seperately would be more to help a student hear the piece as different melodies, so the student wouldn't hear it (and thus play it) too vertically.

It's not something I would go through each and every time. I figure that if you're understanding the fugue properly, and your fingers are playing the notes properly, all the extra work of learning each voice seperately is unnecessary.

[odsum25]

Again, there is no right or wrong way, unless it is harmful to one's health. I tend to memorize the voices, but don't necessarily learn fugues hands seperately. However, before beginning to practice I analyze a fugue (as I do with all pieces,) dissecting it harmonically, structurally, and adding tentative fingerings. An exercise that I find quite helpful, learned from my teacher who got it from Kirkpatrick, is solfege one voice as you play the others. Believe me, it's much more difficult than it may seem, but really aids in memorization and gives a greater understanding of the structure.

[lucasdopandeiro]

I'll add here something nobody on this thread has mentioned...

What is helping me to play contrapuntal music is the fact that i'm training my ears at college. The teacher started by playing simple melodies at the piano and we would write it on paper.

Gradually, he would add a second voice, and then a third, and, this semester (after 2 years), we were already transcribing by ear four-part music with more complex harmony, and even some modal stuff.

2 years with a big group of about 30 students, if done individually someone may get trained in less time.

When learning to listen to different voices in a fugue, for example, i see no need to actually memorize each voice separetely. What would be interesting, to check if you are really listening to them is to play the fugue putting emphasis on the tenor, then on the contralto, etc.

Sorry for my english!
Lucas

[cfortunato]

I see no reason to memorize them separately, but working on them separately improves my technique when they are joined.

[m1469]

Well, memorize them separately once, and you will know the difference.  One knows the composition so much more in detail.  Also, if you happen to have a memory lapse in one voice, chances are, you will not with the others (at least not at the same time). 

One just does not know it the same way nor as in depth when learned as a "normal" piece.

I have a lot more ideas on this that seem to be very buried at the moment, deep down in "no words land" (that's too normal for me lately).

Anyway, it is fun to have more people contributing still.


m1469