# How do you listen to fugues?



## pianolearnerstride (Dec 17, 2014)

Do you listen to each voice separately and follow it all the way through?

Reason I ask is... I have trouble enjoying fugues.... They sound to me purely like intellectual exercises... If I was to look at the sheet music and analyze the composition that way, I'd enjoy it more... seeing here's the subject, here's the countersubject etc...


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Either way. I listen to them more than once. 

On YouTube, you can find videos of Bach Fugues with visual accompaniment. Each voice is a different color, etc. It really underscores this issue.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Bach's fugues. Intellectual exercises?

Bach takes the fugue and through supergenius transforms these "intellectual exercises" into some of the most spiritually profound music ever written. This is one reason why Bach is most likely the greatest composer who ever walked this planet.

Homework assignment: Listen to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier Book One until you take back that statement about fugues being only "intellectual exercises".


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

hpowders said:


> Bach's fugues. Intellectual exercises?
> 
> Bach takes the fugue and through supergenius transforms these "intellectual exercises" into some of the most spiritually profound music ever written. This is one reason why Bach is most likely the greatest composer who ever walked this planet.
> 
> Homework assignment: Listen to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier Book One until you take back that statement about fugues being only "intellectual exercises".


Even Gould's recording of the Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 and 2 portray the sublime nature of the fugue. I listen to fugues closely by tracing each singular voice and focusing on where the melody leads on.

But for me the harmony and texture are going to be the lynch pins for the whole piece.


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## pianolearnerstride (Dec 17, 2014)

hpowders said:


> Bach's fugues. Intellectual exercises?
> 
> Bach takes the fugue and through supergenius transforms these "intellectual exercises" into some of the most spiritually profound music ever written. This is one reason why Bach is most likely the greatest composer who ever walked this planet.
> 
> Homework assignment: Listen to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier Book One until you take back that statement about fugues being only "intellectual exercises".


Is there anything I should listen for? Is just listening to it sufficient... ie: by osmosis, I'll see the profundity of the music?


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I like to follow each instrument. I try to follow one, another time perhaps a different one etc., but, so far, no matter how hard I have tried, I have gotten lost after not all that long and had to content myself with the beauty of the combined effect, which is surely the point.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

pianolearnerstride said:


> Is there anything I should listen for? Is just listening to it sufficient... ie: by osmosis, I'll see the profundity of the music?


I just listen to the interactions of the voices. As a technical exercise you can dissect them, but to hear Bach's greatness, play a fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier and just relax and hear the greatness. Follow along with a score if you must.

Also, welcome to Talk Classical!


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

How I listen to fugues: I kick back - way back - and listen in big gobs, as big as I can manage. If the fugue is more than tinkering it may amount to music.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

pianolearnerstride said:


> Is there anything I should listen for? Is just listening to it sufficient... ie: by osmosis, I'll see the profundity of the music?


Actually, I think that's the best way to go upon initial listenings. Once the piece is really familiar to you, you'll want to listen to individual lines and hear how independent they are while also amazingly linked to one another.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

It seems to me that Bach mostly composed his fugues in such a manner that the whole texture could be absorbed at once: often when a new voice enters, another starts playing long notes or becomes silent, or two voices are composed so that they complement one another as if they had been initially conceived of as one melody, and so on. 

I don't see much point in listening to fugues if you aren't going to listen to the texture as a whole. I wouldn't say I can follow everything at once as intently as I can a single voice, but I used to find fugues incomprehensible and now after years of developing my listening skills, polyphonic/contrapuntal music has become my favorite kind of music so I must be doing something right.

I'd say start by listening to all sorts of music contrapuntally, paying attention to the bass and chords as much as the melody, listen to a fugue now and then, try to expand your mind. There's no reason why you couldn't perceive the whole texture at once other than that your neuronal pathways haven't developed to deal with all the sensory data yet.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Yeah. That's what I mean. If you dissect a Bach fugue, what's the point? Bach meant you to hear the "whole thing".


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

I listen to fugues in the same way I listen to The Fugs. That is, I try not to aurally dissect things but rather try to appreciate the work as a whole. After all, if Bach had wanted us to listen only to one line of a fugue, he'd have written only that one line. The beauty is in the layers of sound, much as it is in a song by The Fugs. 

It's sort of the same thing with frogs. I mean, I can appreciate the scientific need to dissect the little buggers in order to learn about biological systems. But I certainly much more enjoy watching the little green creatures hop and swim and croak (sing, that is, not die) at the local pond.

So with fugues.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

_*How do I listen to fugues?*_
LOL, horizontally... since that is the game which is afoot.

You could try the surviving torso movement of the Bach Cantata "Nun ist das Heil und der Kraft -- a choral fugue, with instruments and some very cool punctuation by the brass -- steering away from the keyboard fugues. It is a double fugue, and goes along at a pretty zippy tempo.

Or better yet, get away from Bach's fugues and 18th century North European counterpoint altogether if it does not "do it for you," (a lot of Bach does _not_ do it for me, and where many find so many of his fugues divine, I find them, like you I think, pretty square and more technical exercise -- and to me most of Bach's fugues are no more "divine" than a Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, which is not 'great literature,' but a mere cerebral pastime. LOL), and try instead some other fugue / fugal rep from later... there is a TC thread of 'all fugues or fugal,' -- close enough the (sorely lacking) TC search engine may bring you to it, and with a ton of rep which is not Bach.

Try the First Movement of Bartok's _Music for stringed instruments, percussion and Celeste_ (over which there is an ongoing points of view whether it is fugue or canon

...or the final movement _Prelude and Fugue_ from Stravinsky's magnificent _Concerto for two pianos solo,_ and his double inverted fugue from _A Symphony of Psalms._

Thomas Ades' _In Seven Days_, orchestral piece with piano obbligato, has two movements which are pretty 'glorious' fugues, and they sound nothing like Bach!

There are far more than 'just a few' varieties of counterpoint, even within the rather rigorous realms of fugue. BTW -- 'fugue' is not a form, but a procedure, a mistake many seem to make, usually deferring to "what Bach did" in the WTC a lot of the time.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Well obviously, since Bach is the one and only composer to ever fugued, what one must do is perform the secret ritual to invoke his spirit from the heights of protestant heaven to this realm. Sadly, the details of this ceremony are lost. Otherwise a rift in the space-time continuum would have opened and the rapture would have occurred.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Well obviously, since Bach is the one and only composer to ever fugued, what one must do is perform the secret ritual to invoke his spirit from the heights of protestant heaven to this realm. Sadly, the details of this ceremony are lost. Otherwise a rift in the space-time continuum would have opened and the rapture would have occurred.


Oh, Lol.

Does this confirm rapture will occur when listening to 18th century Reformation / Protestant counterpoint?

And is the rapture a listener gets while listening to the 1st movement of Bartok's _Music for Stringed Instruments, Percussion and Celesta_ a rapture in a completely different universe / time-space continuum?

These are Very Important questions


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

The fascinating thing for me is that fugues only really exist in the moment they are performed. I can't whistle a fugue, only the first entry of the subject, but then it's over. I can't play a fugue in my head, even the ones I know well. I don't feel like I can recreate them in any way, I have to hear them. With less polyphonic music, one can get the impression that one can sing or hum an entire piece from start to finish simply by following the main melody line.

I like to jump from one voice to another and follow them the way I want, in good fuges each voice is interesting throughout.

I'm not sure though what exactly creates this magical effect than polyphony has on me. Is it the thrill of being overwhelmed by the information overload when multiple, non-prioritizable things are happening at the same time? Is it the echo-like call-and-answer effect of imitative counterpoint? Is it the sheer puzzling fact that a bunch of different things can go on simultaneously and still fit well together?

I wouldn't call fugues intellectual, since I wouldn't call any music intellectual. I'd call fuges pieces of highly organized and complex density. Less polyphonic is simpler in the sense that one usually has the impression that one is following a single line with accompaniment from the other parts/voices. In fugues, one is perhaps uncertain where to place one's attention in every given moment. At least that's how I experience it.


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## Guest (Dec 19, 2014)

To answer the OP honestly, I normally listen to fugues with my ears open and with my underpants on.
This is self-evident: any good Bach fugue has no _unresolved_ loose ends flying about.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

It's all depending on why I'm listening, if its for pure enjoyment I just turn of the intellect and let the music flow over me! You know, Bach did not write his fugues for analytic musicologists (of whom I am one) but as the purest form of musical enjoyment! So, just kick back and enjoy!

/ptr


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## Guest (Dec 19, 2014)

Yes Ptr, Bach fugues rock, or should do. Underpants or not. Boxer shorts are OK playing Bach in the summer.


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## Guest (Dec 19, 2014)

By the way Ptr, I finally checked out your coordinates (N 57° 13.728', E 18° 30.4) and I see you live next to a cow pat in the middle of nowhere. How can this be, _chérie_?


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

TalkingHead said:


> Yes Ptr, Bach fugues rock, or should do. Underpants or not. Boxer shorts are OK playing Bach in the summer.


I cant really play Bach in my underpants as I get leather-burns on my buttocks from the piano stool, me playing Bach is very reminiscent of Jerry Lee Lewis rockin' hard! (I do occasionally listen without underwear!)










Bach'n'roll man!

/ptr


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## Guest (Dec 19, 2014)

I have a photo of me playing the "fugue" in Bach's Cello Suite N° 5 (Prelude) without underpants or anything else. It is available for a certain price.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

brotagonist said:


> I like to follow each instrument. I try to follow one, another time perhaps a different one etc., but, so far, no matter how hard I have tried, I have gotten lost after not all that long and had to content myself with the beauty of the combined effect, which is surely the point.


Thanks for admitting that. I thought it was just me. If I'm going to get the most out of one of Bach's fugues, I have to have the score with markings all over it as a play-by-play.

In contrast, Handel's fugues are crystal-clear. Of the two, I'd say I get more aural enjoyment out of Handel's than Bach's.


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## Kibbles Croquettes (Dec 2, 2014)

ptr said:


> It's all depending on why I'm listening, if its for pure enjoyment I just turn of the intellect and let the music flow over me!
> 
> /ptr


What I think is critical to the question - "how do you listen to..." - is to realize that as living beings we have several different listening strategies, or modes of listening, and we can with a conscious effort choose between different modes and pay attention to different aspects of sounds (or more narrowly: music). One can use a _critical_ or _reduced_ mode; or an _empathetic_ or _semantic_ mode. Or even some different modes. These names, that are in italics - and that I might have remembered incorrectly - are from a paper by Tuuri et al., published... well, some time ago.

The prior knowledge that the listener has, may influence what kind of mode is chosen (more or less consciously). If indeed one has the prior knowledge that Bach's fugues are rigorously constructed, it might lead to choosing a more analytical mode of listening. And it might even be that even if one would consciously try to listen to Bach's fugues using a more empathetic mode of listening, trying to focus on the intentions and emotions of the composer and performer, it could be that the already present idea about Bach's fugues would influence how the intentions and emotions would be interpreted: maybe someone who very strongly sees Bach's fugues as musical crossword puzzles then interprets that the intention of the composer indeed was to make crossword puzzles and signal emotional coldness.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

One thing I like to do is listen to how the voices twerk around each other. I have just been doing that with Leonhardt's DHM Art of Fugue.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Fugues are nice, I listen to them the same way as other music. Sometimes I do pay attention to the individual lines and try to follow them, but I do that with other music too.

When I'm in the right mood there is nothing like a good fugue, but in general there are other styles of music I enjoy more, I find there are more preludes in the WTC I enjoy than fugues.

In the early 20th century fugues were really out of fashion. Ravel only ever wrote one, (from _Le Tombeau de Couperin_) and it barely qualifies. I believe he also suggested the work could be played with or without the fugue.

Fugues just aren't for everyone. David Lynch is quoted as saying listening to a fugue makes him feel as though his head is about to explode.

One of my favorite non-Bach fugues is the one that occurs at the end of Rodrigo's _Passacaglia_ from his _3 Spanish Pieces_.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

TalkingHead said:


> To answer the OP honestly, I normally listen to fugues with my ears open and with my underpants on.
> This is self-evident: any good Bach fugue has no _unresolved_ loose ends flying about.


I've always regarded the underpants as optional.
And doesn't The Art of Fugue end in mid fragment?


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

Usually asleep 

Nah, but I don't really like to listen to music that absolutely necessitates an intellectual approach to appreciate it. Many fugues have a lot of beauty and drama without having to think 'subject, countersubject, here's stretto, diminution, etc'.....


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I had an afterthought I think worth mentioning: those who have learned enough of playing at a keyboard are at a tremendous advantage re: understanding and hearing polyphony in any of its aspects, contrapuntal or other.

Having learned more than a couple of Bach fugues (piano -- and a few on organ when that was briefly studied for a semester) and then over time having read through the entire WTC more than once makes for a direct and 'deep in' experience directly dealing with hearing and controlling a number of independent lines. Since that is of course from the inside out, no way it is not going to affect in general "how you listen."

Single line instrumentalists, and those who do not play anything are at varying disadvantages in this direct experience vs. the keyboard player. For them, well, repeat listening, looking at the score and learning to follow (entirely possible without knowing how to actually read music, since a score is also a graphic analogue chart) are then well-advised for anyone who has more of 'a struggle' with contrapuntal music as the OP seems to suggest.


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