I am thinking about playing the C Major fugue to work on independance among other things. I have sight read through this and it will take some shedding. Do any of you have any suggestions on how to approach sticking for a fugue? Is it just whatever seems natraul, or do you prefer to keep each voice assigned to a particular mallet (i.e. bass to mallet 1)? Also, do you think this would be a good audition piece? It is quick and demonstates quite a bit, maybe this paired with a short modern piece as well.
Hello -
Regarding your question with sticking in the WTC Fugues, i would recommend that each voice is assigned to a particular mallet, similiar to the sticking patterns found in the Stevens transcriptions of the Bach Violin Sonatas.
When breaking this piece down, i recommend that you practice each voice seperately then combine all the voices. This will allow you to really focus on the technical aspects and examine closely what you are doing.
I think this would make a good audition piece. Anything of Bach, whether its a Cello Suite, Violin Sonata or a WTC Fugue would make a solid audition choice. I do agree with you that you should pair the WTC Fugue with a modern marimba piece of the same length, such as one or two Helble preludes and/or a couple of Gordon Stout's Etudes.
Best of luck in your studies.
Sincerely, Lon Stetz
I think this was a set piece for one of the marimba competitions a few years ago. Assuming this is the one from WTC I, you could assign your outer 2 mallets to the top and bottom voices, and stick the middle voice with your inside mallets as convenient. You can also use mallets of different voices to further distinguish the voices, for example a soft mallet for the bass voice, medium mallet for the high voice, and harder mallets for the inner voice.
With some of the fugues, including this one, you'll run into some problems performing the ornamentation fast enough if you stick to rigidly to the sticking assignments, and this is one argument for using 4 of the same mallets.
It only gets more fun when you begin reading some of the 4 part fugues, especially in WTC II.
Michael
