Week 3 - Into the Fugue: Three Voices at Once
Hey everyone! 🎹
Halfway there! Many of you are still working through the Prelude, and that's completely ok. Take the time you need with it. The threads will be here whenever you're ready.
For those moving on to the Fugue, this week's suggested focus is Sections 8–11 (Fugue, bars 1–20):
- Section 8, Fugue Fundamentals: what a fugue actually is, and articulated legato, the touch that keeps every voice clear.
- Section 9, The Exposition (bars 1–9): the fingering walkthrough, setting your tempo, and giving each of the three voices its own character.
- Section 10, Voicing Gym: the seesaw approach, 2-for-1, exaggeration, ghosting and staggered-note practice. These are short drills you can return to all week.
- Section 11, Development & Episodes (bars 9–20): a structural map of the development, the conversation within one hand, the jumps, double thirds, and those shocking harmonies before the recap.
Open the Track here: https://app.tonebase.co/piano/tracks/bach-prelude-and-fugue-in-c-minor-bwv-847
Jumping in now? No catching up required. Go at your own pace.
Share a clip, a question, or a voicing drill that's working for you (no clip required), and leave a kind word or a tip on someone else's post. Prelude updates are welcome here too!
Question for the week: which voice is hardest for you to keep alive in the Fugue (or, if you're still in the Prelude, which passage is giving you the most trouble)?
Coming up:
- Next Tuesday, Oct 27, 11am PT: Deep Dive on the C minor Prelude and Fugue, live with me. Post your questions in these threads and I'll answer as many as I can!
- Monday, Nov 2, 11am PT: Watch Party featuring your recorded submissions 🎥
35 replies
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OK, here's a recording of the first part of the Prelude (can't manage the page turn!). It sounds so mechanical. and undynamic... I am really trying figure out how to manage the inner voices - sometimes more quasi-staccato?
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Thanks, Vicki - I will listen to Nikolayeva. I can play the piece faster but also find that I tend to make more slip ups. Thanks for the reminder about the slight delay on the downbeats.
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For context, I was already working on this Prelude and Fugue prior to the challenge starting. But I just now finished all the sections of the track and wanted to give the whole thing a go!
Please tell me what needs improvement. I know some things are obvious, but hoping there are at least a few improvements in the Prelude from the last recording 😅
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I have started the Guided Track on the Fugue and arrived at the Voicing Gym, which I shall start tomorrow.
I start the Alto line in the RH but move to the LH on the F of the third beat of Bar 2 in advance of the entry of the soprano line in Bar 3. This sits under the hand by starting on LH 4.
This is one of the pieces that I want to consolidate into my fairly small repertoire of piano pieces, possibly alongside the Prelude, if I can't settle on a final version for the fingerings in the Presto section.
The Prelude is more challenging for me than the Fugue, even though I did not play the Fugue until quite recently. My thoughts are that playing the Prelude now has been challenged by working on this originally when my technique was not ready. My piano teacher was really pleased with how I handled the piece, holding the view that sometimes pieces had to be sacrificed to make qualitative changes in one's technique. I am not sure that I believe that this methodology means that pieces are damaged irretrievably by attempting them before one is fully ready for their challenges. There is a risk that my playing may revert to the previous awkward fingerings, voicings, etc., when under pressure but my aim is to replace those muscle memories with newer preferable ones that are more satisfying and productive.
This is very similar to dancing. A range of methodologies are used with less skilled dancers on the way to approaching more advanced techniques, which are accomplished by re-wiring the circuits in the brain to replace the muscle-memory of the previous approach with ones that are more difficult but can achieve more beauty. The original techniques cannot be removed from the memory and may come to the fore when the dancer is tired, ill, or stressed, but then they can be put back into the back of our memory with consistent relaxed practice aimed at replacing them.
I am pleased to say that the fingerings for the Fugue in the Guided Track are again very similar to my original fingerings, which I have worked out myself, sometimes in preference to those suggested in my Henle Urtext edition. There are some fingerings in the Guided Trach that I want to try out to see if they improve matters for me. I am looking forward to seeing the similarities, or otherwise, for the the approach in the Guided Tracks to Bars 15 - 17, 23-24, and 28-29.