What do I do with a fugue?

[choppin]

I've had a longstanding problem appreciating fugues so I thought I'd just ask straight out: what am I supposed to be doing when I hear a fugue? When I'm listening to a melody, I'm usually hearing something emotional (anger, fear, love, passion, etc.). Should I be getting the same thing from a fugue? Should it be something more intellectual? Take Bach's Art of the Fugue. I've heard it several times on different instruments, even live on string quartet, but I still get the feeling I'm missing what's going on. The music just goes right over my head.

[71 dB]

Fugues and counterpoint in general is one of my favorite things in music. I like it when art is about how different elements relate to each other. I may find a single melody a bit uninteresting (the only relation between the notes is temporal), but in fugue the harmonic and temporal relations get pretty complex. Fugues are intellectual in nature. I also find them to be "larger than life". I think the beauty of fugues is similar to the beauty of math.

[jochanaan]

What I love about fugues is how they begin simply, with one line, then unfold into a beautifully complex structure of sound, and then, often, end simply with a pedal tone and a major (or sometimes minor) chord.  In great fugues such as Bach's, the process of unfolding is almost a religio-spiritual experience, like deep meditation.

[Opus106]

What I love about fugues is how they begin simply, with one line, then unfold into a beautifully complex structure of sound...

This is almost precisely the reason I became a -holic. Even before I began to binge on Bach's music or knew what a fugue was, I was particularly attracted to all sorts of contrapuntal passages in other music, and it seems only natural that I first noticed them in orchestral music, where all of sudden a single instrument or a section starts playing a line; there's also the factor of anticipation (Who turned the other instruments off? What's going to happen next? Hey, that's almost the same tune those guys were playing!) It was with hindsight that I learnt that a lot of pieces or passages that I really liked were actually fugues (and fughetas, fugatos, or whathaveyou -- e.g. the Kyrie from K. 626, the passage in the last movement of the 'Eroica').

[Parsifal]

I've had a longstanding problem appreciating fugues so I thought I'd just ask straight out: what am I supposed to be doing when I hear a fugue? When I'm listening to a melody, I'm usually hearing something emotional (anger, fear, love, passion, etc.). Should I be getting the same thing from a fugue? Should it be something more intellectual? Take Bach's Art of the Fugue. I've heard it several times on different instruments, even live on string quartet, but I still get the feeling I'm missing what's going on. The music just goes right over my head.

Any emotional reaction you experience when you listen to a melody is subjective, and there is no reason why you might not have similar reactions when listening to a fugue.  When you listen to non-fugal classical music the melody is enhanced by other elements, such has harmony or orchestration, which you can chose to analyze, or to simply enjoy.  In the case of a fugue, you have several voices which enter one after another and which create counterpoint, imitating each other, complementing each other, conflicting with each other, creating an implicit harmony, etc.  You can chose to be analytical and pay attention to the way the different voices interact, or you can sit back and let it wash over you.  Or you can decide it doesn't appeal to you and listen to something else. 

[choppin]

Excellent points all. Let me add one more wrinkle. A lot of my problem is with Bach-style fugues. For example, I'm listening to the last movement of Jupiter right now and having none of the problems I do with Art of the Fugue. Is there something that's different about the two of them beyond my inability to handle Art of the Fugue?

[Parsifal]

Excellent points all. Let me add one more wrinkle. A lot of my problem is with Bach-style fugues. For example, I'm listening to the last movement of Jupiter right now and having none of the problems I do with Art of the Fugue. Is there something that's different about the two of them beyond my inability to handle Art of the Fugue?

The Jupiter symphony finale is not a fugue (except perhaps for the coda), although it has passages which are contrapuntal.  Free counterpoint frequently appears in symphonic writing.  There's a lot of it in Mahler as well, between the apocalyptic stuff.

I don't think the art of the fugue is the best place to start.  It is rather obsessive and probably more likely to appeal to someone who is already attracted to fugues.  The Well Tempered Clavier may interest you more, since it contains lots of fugues with very different styles.  You might also be interested in Handel's Op 3 concerti, which have several movements which are fugal but not as imposing as Bach's fugues.

[prémont]

Excellent points all. Let me add one more wrinkle. A lot of my problem is with Bach-style fugues. For example, I'm listening to the last movement of Jupiter right now and having none of the problems I do with Art of the Fugue. Is there something that's different about the two of them beyond my inability to handle Art of the Fugue?

Well, the Art of Fugue is more complex.

When listening to a fugue you might try to forget everything about counterpoint and just listen to the music. Do like this a lot of times. And when you begin to know the music by heart so to say, you may begin to listen more analytical. But never let your urge to understand the technical part of the music spoil your emotional experience.

[choppin]

The Jupiter symphony finale is not a fugue (except perhaps for the coda), although it has passages which are contrapuntal.  Free counterpoint frequently appears in symphonic writing.  There's a lot of it in Mahler as well, between the apocalyptic stuff.

I don't think the art of the fugue is the best place to start.  It is rather obsessive and probably more likely to appeal to someone who is already attracted to fugues.  The Well Tempered Clavier may interest you more, since it contains lots of fugues with very different styles.  You might also be interested in Handel's Op 3 concerti, which have several movements which are fugal but not as imposing as Bach's fugues.

I really like the WTC; I'm listening to the Handel now. Maybe it's just something art Art of the Fugue. What did you mean by Bach's fugue's being imposing?

[Parsifal]

I really like the WTC; I'm listening to the Handel now. Maybe it's just something art Art of the Fugue. What did you mean by Bach's fugue's being imposing?

Perhaps that Bach packs more ideas more tightly in his fugues.  In fugues by Handle, for instance, a single idea will be repeated numerous times with minor variations so that it is easy to recognize it.  Bach isn't so merciful.  As soon as he has used an idea he thinks of a new idea and you have to be very alert if recognize what he is doing.

[jochanaan]

Excellent points all. Let me add one more wrinkle. A lot of my problem is with Bach-style fugues. For example, I'm listening to the last movement of Jupiter right now and having none of the problems I do with Art of the Fugue. Is there something that's different about the two of them beyond my inability to handle Art of the Fugue?

Die Kunst der Fuge is definitely advanced listening.  And there are serious problems with any performance of it, since the instruments were not specified yet it's nearly impossible to play as written on organ.  I would recommend some of Bach's earlier organ fugues for beginning study: the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor, the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, or even The Musical Offering are more accessible.  And lots of his other music has fugal passages or movements, such as the second Kyrie, the Gratias agimus tibi and Dona nobis pacem from the B minor Mass; the last movements of Brandenburg Concertos 2 and 4, and probably innumerable sections from the Cantatas.

There are lots of fugues from the last hundred years too.  One of my favorites is the first movement of Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.

[aukhawk]

Bach isn't so merciful.  As soon as he has used an idea he thinks of a new idea and you have to be very alert if recognize what he is doing.

... or you can sit back and let it wash over you.

Scarpia says it all.

[Marc]

[....] You can chose to be analytical and pay attention to the way the different voices interact, or you can sit back and let it wash over you. [....]

The latter usually happens to me.
About three weeks ago, during an organ concerto, I was drowning completely in the fugue (played organo pleno) of Bach's BWV 544 in B-minor. It felt like a catharsis (again).

If listening to a fugue is a bit too daunting right now, you might want to begin with the two-part and three-part inventions.  After you can comfortably follow the individual lines, and gain some understanding of how the lines interact and hear the imitation and development in these works you can graduate to the fugues.

Yeah.
Or the 4 Duetti (for organ) BWV 802-805.

[aukhawk]

As someone who only listens to music, I imagine the whole 'fugue' thing probably means more to the performer (and possibly even more still to the composer). 
The performer would take something from the patterns on the printed score and working out the fingering, and Bach might have had a lot of fun making it all work - I'm guessing he might also have seen the fugue as a compositional tool, not unlike copy'n'paste on a present-day word processor - to take a simple 15-second theme and make it last 5 minutes.

A fugue is not just a canon - its a lot more complicated than that, with arcane rules of composition (which of course occasionally get broken, which I guess is part of the fun).  By the time a fugue subject has been 'inverted', 'augmented' and possibly even 'modulated' and then a second subject tossed into the mix there's not a lot left for the listening ear to key onto - whereas on the printed or written score the patterns might stand out visually, clear as day, in a rather satisfying way.   

So I'd suggest maybe trying some visual aids.  You could follow the score while listening.  Many Bach scores are freely dowloadable, for example this page contains a link to a PDF of the WTC Book 1 -
http://classical-music-online.net/en/production/251
Such incredibly compact, economic notation!

Or you could watch a performance, while listening.  Pianists, for example, often tend to play this music in a (very agreeable) 'even-handed' way so that it's quite hard to hear the subject entries, while simultaneously they are emoting like mad with their body language - parted lips, eyebrows twitch, body lean to the left and plonk! - in comes the subject in the lowest register.  Following are some YouTube links taken at random, there are loads more to be found if for example you Google "youtube macgregor bach".  Obviously the actual fugue usually starts about halfway though each of these clips -
Joanna MacGregor playing WTC Book I No.17 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKrAFagCABs
Angela Hewitt playing WTC II No.15 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0ecxL2QHNE
Glenn Gould - WTC II No.9 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZRQvXGqPII
Nikolayeva plays Shostakovich Prelude & Fugue No.4 - a much more stoic, deadpan delivery, this -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw6PzoKiomk
I came in to Bach via Shostakovich - it's these latter Preludes and Fugues (as played by Nikolayeva) that switched me on as a listener, then I graduated to Bach.

You could also look at some of the 'visualisations' of Fugues on YouTube - rather remarkable animated coloured lines to pick out the musical strands, modern descendants of 'Fantasia' - here are three (again of many) -
Passacaglia & Fugue in C minor -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1atQFLYbzuk
"Little" fugue in G minor -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVadl4ocX0M
and Glenn Gould's own "So you want to write a fugue?" - highly recommended viewing, this -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U85-4EYgZk4

[Opus106]

I'm guessing he might also have seen the fugue as a compositional tool, not unlike copy'n'paste on a present-day word processor - to take a simple 15-second theme and make it last 5 minutes.

Granted I know next to nothing about theory, I still feel that this analogy is not suitable at all. As you have stated later on in your post, a fugue is not mere repetition.

[listener]

There's a text by Higgs on Fugue now in reprint which though academic makes listening for the nuts and bolts of the construction more interesting.   I see amazon listings as low as $1.39 for it.

[The new erato]

You run away ? (seeing as fugue essentially means flight).

I 've longed to say this since the thread was started and finally could resist no more.