BWV 579 with fingering and pedaling

A few days ago I have received a request from Christian-Angel to provide a score of BWV 579 with fingering and pedaling. That's Johann Sebastian Bach's Fugue in B minor on the Theme by Corelli.

Today I finally finished this project which any of our students can now take advantage of. It will save you many hours of struggle and help you to master this beautiful fugue easier and quicker. It's a PDF score with 5 pages.

A few tips on learning this piece:

For Christian-Angel the most difficult part is the final Stretto - the last 3 systems. This is not surprising because in any Stretto composer develops the theme canonically. This means that a few voices have the same melody played but not at the same time - the parts enter before the previous one has finished.

In this fugue it's so important to practice ALL 15 combinations separately: S, A, T, B, SA, ST, SB, AT, AB, TB, SAT, SAB, STB, ATB and SATB. Make sure you don't skip any of the steps and try not to rush - extremely slow tempo works best for practice purposes.

Don't forget that you don't have to work on the fugue on its entirety, practice of small episodes of about 1 line works best. Start and finish each episode on the downbeat. This helps to connect the fragments between themselves.

In my experience, I had to repeat each step at least 3 times without mistakes in a row before I was ready to go on to the next combination.

And if you apply my fingering, you will achieve articulate legato naturally, almost without thinking.

Enjoy and let me know how your practice goes.

This score is free for Total Organist students.