Methodological report on the topic: “On the development of skills in working with polyphony. Methodical message of the teacher Gorash Oksana Petrovna “Work on polyphony

Methodical message on the topic:

"On the development of skills
work on polyphony"

Teacher
Kolodiy T.P.

piano class

Krasnodar, 2000

Working on polyphonic works is an integral part of learning piano performing arts. After all, piano music is all polyphonic in the broadest sense of the word.

The upbringing of polyphonic thinking, polyphonic hearing, that is, the ability to perceive (hear) and reproduce several sound lines that combine with each other in the simultaneous development of the instrument is one of the most important and most difficult sections of musical education.

Modern piano pedagogy has great confidence in the musical intelligence of children. Based on the experience of B. Bartok,
K. Orff, a teacher, opens up an interesting and complex world of polyphonic music for a child from the first year of study at a music school.

The polyphonic repertoire for beginners is made up of light polyphonic arrangements of folk songs of an under-voiced warehouse, close and understandable to children in their content. The teacher talks about how these songs were sung by the people: she began to sing the song, then the choir (“voices”) picked it up, varying the same melody.

Taking, for example, the Russian folk song “Motherland” from the collection “For Young Pianists” edited by V. Shulgina, the teacher invites the student to perform it in a “choral” way, dividing the roles: the student plays the learned lead part in the lesson, and the teacher, better on another instrument , as this will give each melodic line a greater relief, "depicts" the choir, which picks up the melody of the sing-along. After two or three lessons, the student already performs the “accompanying voices” and is clearly convinced that they are no less independent than the lead melody. Working on individual voices, it is necessary to achieve expressive and melodious performance by their student. I would like to draw attention to this all the more because the importance of working on voices by students is often underestimated; it is carried out formally and is not brought to that degree of perfection when the student can actually perform each voice separately as a melodic line. It is very useful to learn each voice by heart.

Playing both parts alternately with the teacher in the ensemble, the student not only clearly feels the independent life of each of them, but also hears the whole piece in a simultaneous combination of both voices, which greatly facilitates the most difficult stage of work - the transfer of both parts into the hands of the student.

In order to make the understanding of polyphony more accessible to the child, it is useful to resort to figurative analogies and use program compositions in which each voice has its own figurative characteristic. For example, Sorokin's treatment of the song "Merry Katya", which he called "Shepherds play the flute". The two-voice sub-voice polyphony in this piece becomes especially accessible to the student thanks to the program title. The child easily imagines two planes of sonority here: as if the game of an adult shepherd and a little shepherdess playing along on a small pipe. This task usually captivates the student and the work is quickly argued. Such a way of mastering polyphonic pieces significantly increases interest in them, and most importantly, it awakens in the student's mind a vivid, figurative perception of voices. It is the basis of an emotional and meaningful attitude to voice leading. A number of other pieces of the sub-voice warehouse are learned in a similar way. They can be found in many collections for beginners, for example: “I want to become a musician”, “The path to music-making”, “Pianist-dreamer”, “Piano playing school” edited by A. Nikolaev, “Collection of piano pieces” edited by Lyakhovitskaya , "Young pianist" V. Shulgina.

The collections of Elena Fabianovna Gnesina "Piano ABC", "Small Etudes for Beginners", "Preparatory Exercises" by Elena Fabianovna Gnesina can be of great benefit in developing the basic skills of performing polyphony during the period of primary education.

In the collections of Shulgina "Young Pianists", Barenboim "The Path to Music Making", Turgeneva "Pianist-Dreamer", creative tasks are given for the pieces of the sub-vocal warehouse, for example: pick up the lower voice to the end and determine the key; play one voice and sing the other; add a second voice to the melody and write down the accompaniment; compose a continuation of the upper voice, and so on.

Composing, as one of the types of creative music-making for children, is extremely useful. It activates thinking, imagination, feelings. Finally, it significantly increases interest in the studied works.

The active and interested attitude of a student to polyphonic music depends entirely on the method of work of the teacher, on his ability to lead the student to a figurative perception of the basic elements of polyphonic music, its inherent techniques, such as imitation.

In the Russian folk songs “I walk with the weed” or “The woodcutter” from V. Shulgina’s collection “For Young Pianists”, where the initial melody is repeated an octave lower, one can figuratively explain the imitation by comparison with such a familiar and interesting phenomenon for children as echo. The kid will be happy to answer the teacher's questions: how many voices are in the song? What voice sounds like an echo? And he will arrange (himself) the dynamics (f and p), using the “echo” technique. Playing in an ensemble will revive the perception of imitation: the student plays the melody, and the teacher plays its imitation (“echo”), and vice versa.

It is very important from the first steps of mastering polyphony to accustom the child to the clarity of the alternate entry of voices, the clarity of their conduct and ending. It is necessary at each lesson to achieve a contrasting dynamic embodiment and a different timbre for each voice.

On the plays of B. Bartok and other modern authors, children comprehend the originality of the musical language of modern composers. The example of Bartok's play "Opposite Movement" shows how important the game of polyphony is for the education and development of a student's ear, especially when it comes to the perception and performance of works of modern music. Here the melody of each voice individually sounds natural. But during the initial playing of the piece with both hands at once, the student may be unpleasantly struck by the dissonances that arise during the opposite movement and the listing of fa-fa-sharp, C-C-sharp. If, however, he has previously properly assimilated each voice separately, then their simultaneous sound will be perceived by him as logical and natural.

Often in modern music there is a complication of polyphony with polytonality (carrying out voices in different keys). Of course, such a complication must have some justification. For example, in I. Stravinsky's fairy tale play "The Bear" the melody is a five-sound diatonic chant based on the lower sound C, the accompaniment is a repeated alternation of the sounds D flat and A flat. Such an "alien" accompaniment should resemble the creak of an "alien" wooden leg, to the beat of which the bear sings his song. B. Bartok's plays "Imitation", "Imitation in Reflection" introduce children to direct and mirror imitation.

Following the mastery of simple imitation (repetition of a motif in another voice), work begins on canonical songs built on stretto imitation, which enters before the end of the imitated melody. In plays of this kind, not one phrase or motive is imitated, but all phrases or motives until the end of the work. As an example, let's take Y. Litovko's play "The Shepherd" (canon) from the collection "For Young Pianists" by V. Shulgina. This play is subtextualized with words. To overcome the new polyphonic difficulty, the following way of working, consisting of three stages, is useful. In the beginning, the piece is rewritten and learned in simple imitation. Under the first phrase of the song, pauses are put in the lower voice, and when it is imitated in the second voice, the pauses are written out in the soprano. The second phrase is rewritten in the same way, and so on. In such a lightweight "arrangement" the play is played for two or three lessons. (ex. 1) Then the “arrangement” becomes somewhat more complicated: the phrases are rewritten already in stretta imitation, and in the 5th measure in the soprano, pauses are indicated. The second phrase learns in the same way, and so on (example 2). The ensemble method of work at this time should become the leading one. Its significance increases even more at the last, third stage of the work, when the piece is played by the teacher and the student in the ensemble as it was written by the composer. And only after that both voices are transferred to the hands of the student.

It should be noted that the process of rewriting polyphonic works is very useful. This was pointed out by such outstanding teachers of our time as Valeria Vladimirovna Listova, Nina Petrovna Kalinina, Yakov Isaakovich Milshtein. The student quickly gets used to the polyphonic texture, understands it better, more clearly realizes the melody of each voice, their vertical relationship. When copying, he sees and grasps with his inner ear such an important feature of polyphony as the mismatch in time of identical motives.

The effectiveness of such exercises is enhanced if they are then played by ear, from different sounds, in different registers (together with the teacher). As a result of such work, the student is clearly aware of the canonical structure of the piece, the introduction of the imitation, its relationship with the phrase that is being imitated, and the connection of the end of the imitation with a new phrase.

Since stretta imitation in the polyphony of J.S. Bach is a very important means of development, the teacher, who cares about the prospect of further polyphonic education of the student, should focus on it.

Further, the study of polyphonic pieces of the Baroque era acquires particular importance, among which the works of J. S. Bach occupy the first place. In this era, the rhetorical foundations of the musical language were formed - musical - rhetorical figures associated with certain semantic symbols (figures of a sigh, exclamation, question, silence, amplification, various forms of movement and musical structure). Acquaintance with the musical language of the Baroque era serves as the basis for the accumulation of the intonational vocabulary of a young musician and helps him understand the musical language of subsequent eras.

The best pedagogical material for educating a pianist's polyphonic sound thinking is the clavier heritage of J.S. Bach, and the first step on the way to "polyphonic Parnassus" is the well-known collection called "Anna Magdalena Bach's Notebook". The small masterpieces included in the Music Notebook are mostly small dance pieces - polonaises, minuets and marches, distinguished by an extraordinary richness of melodies, rhythms, and moods. In my opinion, it is best to acquaint the student with the collection itself, i.e., the “Notebook”, and not with individual pieces scattered across different collections. It is very useful to tell the child that the two “Notebooks of Anna Magdalena Bach” are original home music albums of the J. S. Bach family. This included instrumental and vocal pieces of various kinds. These pieces, both his own and those of others, were written in a notebook by the hand of J.S. Bach himself, sometimes by his wife Anna Magdalena Bach, there are also pages written in the children's handwriting of one of Bach's sons. Vocal compositions - arias and chorales included in the collection - were intended for performance in the home circle of the Bach family.

I usually start introducing students to the "Notebook" Minuet d - moll. The student will be interested to know that nine Minuets are included in the collection. During J.S. Bach, the Minuet was a widespread, lively, well-known dance. It was danced both at home, and at fun parties and during solemn palace ceremonies. In the future, the minuet became a fashionable aristocratic dance, which was carried away by prim courtiers in white powdered wigs with curls. You should show illustrations of the balls of that time, draw the attention of children to the costumes of men and women, which to a large extent determined the style of dancing (women have crinolines, immensely wide, requiring smooth movements, men have legs covered with stockings, in elegant high-heeled shoes, with beautiful garters , - bows at the knees). The minuet was danced with great solemnity. His music reflected in its melodic turns the smoothness and importance of bows, low ceremonial squats and curtsies.

After listening to the Minuet performed by the teacher, the student determines its character: with its melody and melodiousness, it is more like a song than a dance, therefore the character of the performance should be soft, smooth, melodious, in a calm and even movement. Then the teacher draws the student's attention to the difference between the melody of the upper and lower voices, their independence and independence from each other, as if two singers sing them: we determine that the first - a high female voice - is a soprano, and the second is a low male - bass; or two voices perform two different instruments, which ones? It is imperative to involve the student in the discussion of this issue, to awaken his creative imagination. I. Braudo attached great importance to the ability to instrument on the piano. “The first concern of the leader,” he wrote, “will be to teach the student to extract from the piano a certain, necessary sonority in this case. I would call this skill … the ability to instrument logically on the piano.” “The performance of two voices in different instrumentation is of great educational importance for the ear.” “It is sometimes convenient to make this distinction clear to the student by means of figurative comparisons. For example, it is natural to compare the solemn, festive Little Prelude in C-dur with a short overture for an orchestra, in which trumpets and timpani take part. It is natural to compare the thoughtful Little Prelude e-moll with a piece for a small chamber ensemble, in which the melody of the solo oboe is accompanied by string instruments. The very understanding of the general nature of the sonority necessary for a given work will help the student develop the exactingness of his ear, help direct this exactingness to the realization of the necessary sound.

In the Minuet in d-moll, the melodious, expressive sound of the first voice resembles the singing of a violin. And the timbre and register of the bass voice approaches the sound of the cello. Then it is necessary to analyze together with the child, asking him leading questions, the form of the play (two-part) and its tonal plan: the first part begins in d - molle, and ends in
in parallel F-dure; the second part begins in F-dure and ends in d-molle; phrasing and associated articulation of each voice separately. In the first part, the lower voice consists of two sentences clearly separated by a cadence, and the first sentence of the upper voice breaks up into two two-bar phrases: the first phrase sounds more significant and insistent, the second is calmer, as if in response. To clarify the question-and-answer relationships, Braudo suggests the following pedagogical technique: the teacher and the student sit at two pianos. The first two-tact is performed by the teacher, the student answers this two-tact - a question by performing the second two-tact - the answer. Then the roles can be changed: the student will “ask” questions, the teacher will answer. At the same time, the performer asking questions can play his melody a little brighter, and the answering one - a little quieter, then try to play the other way around, listen carefully and choose the best option. “It is important that at the same time we teach the student not only to play a little louder and a little quieter, but we teach him to “ask” and “answer” on the piano.

In the same way, you can work on Menuel No. 4 in G-dur, where "questions" and "answers" consist of four-bar phrases. Then the entire first voice of the Minuet is played by the student, expressively intoning "questions" and "answers"; work on the expressiveness of the strokes deepens (bars 2.5) - here figurative comparisons can help the student. For example, in the second measure, the melody "reproduces" an important, deep and significant bow, and in the fifth - lighter, graceful bows, and so on. The teacher can ask the student to depict different bows in motion, based on the nature of the strokes. It is necessary to define the climaxes of both movements - both in the first movement and the main climax of the entire piece in the second movement almost merge with the final cadence - this is a distinctive feature of Bach's style, which the student should be aware of. The question of the interpretation of Bach's cadences occupied such authoritative researchers of Bach's work as F. Busoni, A. Schweitzer, I. Braudo. All of them come to the conclusion that Bach's cadences are characterized by significance, dynamic pathos. Very rarely does a Bach piece end on the piano; the same can be said about the cadences in the middle of the work.

Of the many tasks that stand in the way of studying polyphony, the main thing is to work on melodiousness, intonational expressiveness and the independence of each voice separately. Independence of voices is an indispensable feature of any polyphonic work. Therefore, it is so important to show the student, using the example of the d - minor Minuet, how exactly this independence manifests itself:

1. in the different nature of the sound of voices (instrumentation);
2. in different, almost nowhere coinciding phrasing (for example, in bars 1-4, the upper voice contains two phrases, and the lower one consists of one sentence);
3. in mismatch of strokes (legato and non legato);
4. in the mismatch of climaxes (for example, in the fifth-sixth measures, the melody of the upper voice rises and reaches the top, while the lower voice moves down and rises to the top only in the seventh measure).

5. in different rhythms (the movement of the lower voice in quarter and half durations contrasts with the mobile rhythmic pattern of the upper melody, which consists almost entirely of eighth notes);

6. in the mismatch of dynamic development (for example, in the fourth measure of the second part, the sonority of the lower voice increases, and the upper one decreases).

Bach's polyphony is characterized by polydynamics, and for its clear reproduction one should first of all avoid dynamic exaggerations, one should not deviate from the intended instrumentation until the end of the piece. A sense of proportion in relation to all dynamic changes in any work by Bach is a quality without which it is impossible to convey his music stylistically correctly. Only through a deep analytical study of the basic laws of Bach's style can one comprehend the performing intentions of the composer. All the efforts of the teacher should be directed to this, starting with the “Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach”.

On the material of other pieces from the Notebook, the student learns new features of Bach's music, which he will encounter in works of varying degrees of complexity. For example, with the features of Bach's rhythm, which is characterized in most cases by the use of neighboring durations: eighths and quarters (all marches and minuets), sixteenths and eighths ("Bagpipes"). Another distinguishing feature of Bach's style, which I. Braudo identified and called the "eight-hand technique", is the contrast in the articulation of adjacent durations: small durations are played legato, while larger ones are played non legato or staccato. However, this technique should be used based on the nature of the pieces: the melodious Minuet in d-moll, Minuet No. 15 in c-moll, the solemn Polonaise No. 19 in g-moll are an exception to the "rule of eight".

When performing vocal compositions by I.S. Bach (Aria No. 33 in f-moll, Aria No. 40 in F-Dur), as well as his chorale preludes (at a later stage of learning), one must not lose sight of the fact that the fermata sign does not mean a temporary stop in these pieces, as in modern musical practice; this sign indicated only the end of the verse.

When working on Bach's polyphony, students often come across melismas, the most important artistic and expressive means of music of the 17th-18th centuries. If we take into account the differences in editorial recommendations both regarding the number of decorations and their decoding, it becomes clear that the student will definitely need help and specific instructions from the teacher here. The teacher should proceed from a sense of the style of the works performed, his own performing and pedagogical experience, as well as the available methodological guidelines. So, the teacher can recommend the article by L.I. Roizman "On the performance of decorations (melismas) in the works of ancient composers", in which this issue is analyzed in detail and instructions are given by I.S. Bach. You can refer to the capital study of Adolf Beischlag "Ornament in Music", and of course, get acquainted with Bach's interpretation of the performance of melismas according to the table compiled by the composer himself in the "Night Notebook of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach", covering the main typical examples. Three points are important here:

2. all melismas begin with an upper auxiliary sound (except for the crossed out mordent and a few exceptions, for example, if the sound on which the trill or non-crossed out mordent is already preceded by the nearest upper sound, then the decoration is performed from the main sound);

3. auxiliary sounds in melismas are performed on the steps of the diatonic scale, except for those cases when the alteration sign is indicated by the composer - under the melisma sign or above it.

So that our students do not treat melismas as an annoying hindrance in a play, we need to skillfully present this material to them, arouse interest, curiosity. For example, while learning Minuet No. 4 in G-dur, the student gets acquainted with the melody, not paying attention at first to the mordents written out in the notes. Then he listens to the play performed by the teacher, first without decorations, then with decorations and compares. The guys, of course, like the performance with mordents more. Let him independently look for where and how they are indicated in the notes. Having found badges (mordents) new for him, the student usually waits with interest for the teacher's explanations, and the teacher says that these badges, decorating the melody, are an abbreviated way of recording melodic turns, common in the 17th - 18th centuries. Decorations, as it were, connect, unite the melodic line, enhance speech expressiveness. And if melismas are a melody, then they must be performed melodiously and expressively, in the character and tempo that are inherent in this piece. In order for melismas not to be a “stumbling block”, they must first be heard “to oneself”, sung and only then played, starting at a slow pace and gradually bringing it to the desired one.

A new step in mastering polyphony is acquaintance with the collection "Little Preludes and Fugues", and many threads stretch from it to the "Inventions", "Symphonias" and "HTK". I want to emphasize that when studying Bach's works, gradualness and consistency are very important. “You can't go through fugues and symphonies if inventions and small preludes have not been exhaustively studied before,” I. Braudo warned. These collections, in addition to their artistic merits, give the teacher the opportunity to deepen the student's acquaintance with the characteristic features of Bach's phrasing, articulation, dynamics, voting, to explain to him such important concepts as theme, opposition, hidden polyphony, imitation and others.

The student got acquainted with imitation in the first grade of the music school. In middle school, his understanding of imitation expands. He must understand it as a repetition of the theme - the main musical idea - in a different voice. Imitation is the main polyphonic way of developing the theme. Therefore, a thorough and comprehensive study of the topic, whether it is a Little Prelude, Invention, Symphony or Fugue, is a priority in working on any polyphonic work of imitation warehouse.

Starting to analyze the topic, the student independently or with the help of a teacher determines its boundaries. Then he must understand the figurative-intonational nature of the topic. The chosen expressive interpretation of the theme determines the interpretation of the entire work. That is why it is so necessary to capture all the subtleties of sound performance of the theme, starting from its first performance. While still studying the pieces from Anna Magdalena Bach's Notebook for Music, the student became aware of the motive structure of Bach's melodies. When working, for example, on a theme in Little Prelude No. 2 in C-dur (movement 1), the student must clearly understand that it consists of three ascending motives (example 3). To clearly identify its structure, it is useful to first teach each motive separately, playing it from different sounds, achieving intonational expressiveness. When the theme, after a thorough study of the motives, is played in its entirety, the distinct intonation of each motive is obligatory. To do this, it is useful to play the theme with caesuras between motives, making tenuto on the last sound of each motive.

Using the example of the C-dur Invention, the student should be introduced to inter-motive articulation, which is used to separate one motive from another with the help of a caesura. The most obvious type of caesura is the pause indicated in the text (example 4).

In most cases, the ability to independently establish semantic caesuras is required, which the teacher must instill in the student. In the C-dur Invention, the theme, opposition and new implementation of the theme in the first voice are separated by caesuras. Students easily cope with caesura when moving from a theme to a counter-addition, but from a counter-addition to a new carrying out of a theme, it is more difficult to perform a caesura. You should carefully work on taking the first sixteenth in the second measure quieter and softer, as if on an exhalation, and imperceptibly and easily releasing your finger, immediately lean on the second sixteenth group (sol), sing it deeply and significantly to show the beginning of the theme . Pupils, as a rule, make a gross mistake here, playing the sixteenth before the caesura staccato, and even with a rough, sharp sound, without listening to how it sounds. Braudo recommends that the last note before the caesura be played tenuto if possible.

It is necessary to acquaint the student with various ways of designating inter-motive caesura. It can be indicated by a pause, one or two vertical lines, the end of a league, a staccato sign on a note before a caesura (example 5).

Speaking of intramotive articulation, the child should be taught to distinguish between the main types of motives:

1. iambic motifs that go from a weak time to a strong one;

2. choreic motives, entering on a strong beat and ending on a weak one.

An example of a staccato iambic is the iambic motifs in bars 4-5 in the Little Prelude No. 2 in C-dur (Ex. 6).

Because of the hard ending, it is called "male". In Bach's music, it is constantly found, because it corresponds to its masculine character. As a rule, iambic in Bach's works is pronounced dissected: the off-beat sound is staccated (or played non legato), and the reference sound is played tenuto.

A feature of the articulation of a chorea (soft, feminine ending) is the linking of a strong tense with a weak one. As an independent motif, trochee, due to its softness, is rarely found in Bach's music, being usually an integral part of a three-part motive formed from the merger of two simple motives - iambic and trochaic. The three-term motif, therefore, combines two contrasting types of pronunciation - separation and fusion. (Example 7)

One of the characteristic features of Bach's themes is their predominant iambic structure. Most often, their first holding begins with a weak beat after the previous pause at a strong time. When studying Little Preludes No. 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11 from the first notebook, Inventions No. 1, 2, 3, 5 and others, Symphonies No. 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and others, the teacher should pay attention to the student on the specified structure, which determines the nature of the execution. When playing the theme without accompanying voices, the child's hearing must immediately be included in the "empty" pause so that he feels a natural breath in it before the melodic line unfolds. The feeling of such polyphonic breathing is very important when studying cantilena preludes, inventions, symphonies, fugues.

The iambic structure of Bach's themes also determines the peculiarity of Bach's phrasing, which students must be aware of. Starting from a weak beat, the theme freely “steps over” the barline, ending on a strong beat, thus, the boundaries of the bar do not coincide with the boundaries of the theme, which leads to a softening and weakening of the strong beats of the beat, subject to the inner life of the melody, its desire for semantic culminating peaks - the main thematic accents. Bach's thematic accents often do not coincide with metric ones; they are determined not by the meter, as in a classical melody, but by the inner life of the theme. The intonational peaks of a theme in Bach usually fall on weak beats. “In the Bach theme, all movement and all power rush to the main accent,” wrote A. Schweitzer. - On the way to it, everything is restless, chaotic, when it enters, the tension is discharged, everything that precedes it immediately clears up. The listener perceives the theme as a whole with clearly minted contours. And further "... in order to play Bach rhythmically, it is necessary to emphasize not the strong beats of the measure, but those that are stressed by the meaning of the phrasing." Students who are unfamiliar with the peculiarities of Bach's phrasing often replace the thematic accent with a time accent, which is why their theme breaks into pieces, loses its integrity and inner meaning.

Another essential feature of Bach's thematic art is the so-called hidden polyphony or hidden polyphony. Since this feature is common to almost all Bach melodies, the ability to recognize it seems to be an extremely important skill that prepares students for more complex tasks.

Let us draw the student's attention to the fact that Bach's melody often creates the impression of a concentrated polyphonic fabric. Such saturation of a monophonic line is achieved by the presence of a hidden voice in it. This hidden voice appears only in the melody where there are jumps. The sound left by the jump continues to sound in our minds until the moment when the tone next to it appears, into which it resolves. We will find examples of hidden two-voices in the Little Preludes No. 1,2,8,11, 12 of the first part. In the Little Prelude No. 2 c-moll (part two), we will introduce the student to a hidden two-voice type that is most often found in Bach's clavier works (example 8).

Such a movement of a hidden voice will help to fix in the mind of the child a figurative name - “path”. Such a track should be performed loudly, with support. The hand and finger descend on the keys slightly above, which results in a lateral movement of the brush. A voice repeating the same sound should be played barely audible. The student will use the same technique when working on more complex works, for example, Alemanda from the French suite E-dur, Minuet 1 from Partita 1 and others.

So, having determined the nature of the sound of the theme, its articulation, phrasing, culmination, having carefully won out, singing into the theme, the student proceeds to get acquainted with the first imitation of the theme, called the answer or companion. Here it is necessary to direct the student's attention to the question-answer dialogue of the topic and its imitation. In order not to turn the imitations into a monotonous series of repetitions of the same theme, Braudo advises playing one of the themes, singing the other, then performing the dialogue between the leader and the companion at two pianos. Such work greatly stimulates the ear and polyphonic thinking.

Often teachers have a question: how to perform imitation - to emphasize it or not. There is no single answer to this question. In each specific case, one should proceed from the nature and structure of the play. If the opposition is close in nature to the theme and develops it, as, for example, in the Little Prelude No. 2 C - dur (part 1) or the Invention
No. 1 C - dur, then in order to preserve the unity of the theme and opposition, imitation should not be emphasized. As L. Roizman figuratively expressed, if each presentation of the theme is performed somewhat louder than other voices, then
"... we are witnessing a performance that can be said: forty times a theme and not a single time of a fugue." In Bach's two-voice polyphonic pieces, imitation should most often be emphasized not by loudness, but by a different timbre than the other voice. If the upper voice is played loudly and expressively, and the lower one is easily and invariably quiet, the imitation will be heard more clearly than when it is performed loudly. The theme - depending on the dynamic plan - may sometimes sound quieter than the rest of the voices, but it should always be significant, expressive, noticeable.

Marking Braudo's imitations is considered appropriate in cases where the main character of the work is associated with a constant alternation of motives, with their constant transfer from one voice to another. The roll call of voices is included in this case in the main image of the work. It is with such a roll call that the bright, not devoid of humor nature of Invention No. 8 F - dur, Little Prelude No. 5 E - dur (part 2) (Example 9) is associated.

Following the development of the topic and the answer, work begins on the counteraddition. The countercomplexity is worked out differently than the theme, since the nature of its sound and dynamics can only be established in combination with the answer. Therefore, the main method of work in this case is the performance of the answer and opposition in an ensemble with a teacher, and at home - with two hands, which greatly facilitates the finding of appropriate dynamic colors.

Having worked out the theme and counterposition well, having clearly realized the correlations: theme - answer, theme - counteraddition, answer - counteraddition, you can proceed to careful work on the melodic line of each voice. Long before they are combined, the piece is performed in two voices in an ensemble with a teacher - first in sections, then in its entirety and, finally, completely transferred to the student's hands. And then it turns out that in most cases the student, even if he hears the upper voice quite well, does not hear the lower one at all, like a melodic line. In order to really hear both voices, one should work by concentrating attention and hearing on one of them - the upper one (as in non-polyphonic works). Both voices are played, but in different ways: the top one, to which attention is directed, is f, espressivo, the bottom one is pp (exactly). G. Neuhaus called this method the method of "exaggeration". Practice shows that this work requires just such a big difference in the power of sound and expressiveness. Then not only the upper voice, the main one at the moment, is clearly audible, but also the lower one. They seem to be played by different performers on different instruments. But active attention, active listening without much effort is directed to the voice that is performed more prominently.

Then we shift our attention to the lower voice. We play it f, espressivo, and the top one is pp. Now both voices are heard and perceived by the student even more clearly, the lower one because it is extremely “close”, and the upper one because it is already well known.

When practicing in this way, good results can be achieved in the shortest possible time, since the sound picture becomes clear to the student. Then playing both voices as equals, he equally hears the expressive course of each voice (phrasing, nuance). Such exact and clear hearing of each line is an indispensable condition for the performance of polyphony. Only having reached it, one can then fruitfully work on the work as a whole.

When performing a polyphonic work, the difficulty of hearing the entire fabric (compared to a two-voiced one) increases. Concern for the accuracy of voice leading makes one pay special attention to fingering. One cannot base the fingering of Bach's pieces solely on pianistic conveniences, as Czerny did in his editions. Busoni was the first to revive the fingering principles of the Bach era, as the most appropriate for the identification of the motive structure and the clear pronunciation of motives. The principles of shifting fingers, sliding a finger from a black key to a white one, and soundless substitution of fingers are widely used in polyphonic works. At first, this sometimes seems difficult and unacceptable to the student. Therefore, we must try to involve him in a joint discussion of fingering, clarifying all controversial issues. And then make sure it's enforced.

Work on three - four-voice works, the student can no longer specifically learn each voice, but learn two voices in different combinations: first and second, second and third, first and third, playing one of them f, espressivo, and the other - pp. This method is also useful when connecting all three voices together: first one voice is played loudly, and the other two are quiet. Then the dynamics of the voices change. The amount of time spent on such work varies depending on the degree of sophistication of the student. But teaching this way is useful, this method is perhaps the most effective. Other ways to work on polyphony include:

1. performance of different voices with different strokes (legato and non legato or staccato);
2. performance of all voices p, transparent;
3. the performance of the voices is even with specially focused attention on one of them;
4. performance without one voice (this voices imagine internally or sing).

These methods lead to the clarity of the auditory perception of polyphony, without which the performance loses its main quality - the clarity of voice leading.

In order to understand a polyphonic work and make sense of the work, the student needs from the very beginning to imagine its form, tonal-harmonic plan. A more vivid identification of the form is facilitated by the knowledge of the originality of dynamics in polyphony, especially Bach's, which consists in the fact that the very spirit of music is not characterized by its excessively crushed, undulating application. For Bach's polyphony, architectonic dynamics is most characteristic, in which changes in large constructions are accompanied by new dynamic lighting.

The study of Bach's writings is, first of all, a great analytical work. To understand Bach's polyphonic pieces, special knowledge is needed, a rational system for their assimilation is needed. Achieving a certain level of polyphonic maturity is possible only under the condition of a gradual, smooth increase in knowledge and polyphonic skills. A music school teacher who lays the foundation in the field of mastering polyphony always faces a serious task: to teach people to love polyphonic music, to understand it, and to work on it with pleasure.

List of used literature.

1. G. Neuhaus "On the art of piano playing".
2. B. Milic "Education of a pianist student in grades 3-4 of the music school."
3. B. Milic "Education of a pianist student in grades 5-7 of the music school."
4. A. Artobolevskaya "The first meeting with music."
5. Bulatov “Pedagogical principles of E.F. Gnesina".
6. B. Kremenstein "Education of student's independence in the special piano class".
7. N. Lyubomudrova "Methods of teaching to play the piano."
8. E. Makurenkova “On Pedagogy V.V. Sheet".
9. N. Kalinina "Bach's Clavier Music in the Piano Class".
10. A. Alekseev "Methods of teaching to play the piano."
11. "Issues of piano pedagogy". Issue two.
12. I. Braudo "On the study of Bach's clavier compositions in a music school."

Municipal budgetary institution of additional education of the resort city of Kislovodsk "Children's Music School No. 2" Methodological report "Work on the polyphony of I.S. Bach in the children's music school "The work was performed by: Teacher of the piano department of the MBUDO, Mr. Kislovodsk "DMSh No. 2" Pashkina Elena Nikolaevna, Mr. Kislovodsk, 2016. 1 Polyphony is a type of polyphony, which is a combination of two or more melodies in the simultaneous sounding so that they alternately turn out to be leading when carrying out a theme in a fugue exposition: fluidity, mismatch in different voices of cadences and caesuras of climaxes and accents. The area of ​​musical art based on this type of polyphony is "polyphonic music". The polyphony of the Baroque era in the 18th century is called "free style", characterized by an interest in the inner world of man. The predominance of instrumentalism stimulated the development of organ choral arrangements, polyphonic variations, as well as passacaglia, fantasies, toccatas, canzones, from which the fugue was formed in the 17th century. The fugue (from the Latin “running”) is based on the imitation of one or more themes in all voices according to a certain tonal-harmonic plan. Fugue is the highest form of polyphony. Imitation (from lat. Immitato - “imitation”) is the repetition of a theme or melodic turn in any voice, directly behind other voices. A melody that sounds simultaneously with the theme of a fugue or other polyphonic work is a counterposition. Stretta (Italian stretta - “compression”) is the close holding of a theme in several voices: the theme enters in the next voice before it ends in the previous one. The fusion of polyphony with chordal harmony, the attraction of tonal harmonic development, the interaction of polyphonic and homophonic forms - all this opened up prospects for a further renewal of polyphony, the main trends of which were concentrated in the work of J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel. Working on polyphonic compositions at a music school has a number of difficulties, but also fascinating features, so acquaintance with 2 such compositions should begin from the very beginning of learning to play the piano: from simple to complex. Bach repeatedly emphasized the need for a melodious performance of clavier music. The melodious manner of playing Bach's works is just characteristic of our pianistic school and in many works it is precisely opposed to the performance of a continuous non legato or with a too heavy deep sound. Such playing by no means causes a feeling of real melodiousness and does not contribute to the perception of each voice in its independent development. With the study of each head separately, one must begin the analysis of a polyphonic work. To understand what a melodious performance of Bach should be, Matteson names four main properties of a melody: lightness, pleasantness, clarity and fluidity. Particular attention should be paid to lightness - here we mean not the lightness of the content, but the ease of movement. Along with lightness, clarity (clearness) stands out as one of the most important features of the melody. Correct performance requires the highest degree of clarity in the extraction of sounds and in the pronunciation of words ”- that is, the correct articulation of motives and phrases is very important. It is interesting to note that Bach himself seemed to be very interested in the idea of ​​comparing music with speech. He was well acquainted with the ancient Roman theories of rhetoric, could talk about them for hours and even tried to apply these theories to musical performance. The dynamics in the performance of Bach's works should be, first of all, aimed at revealing the independence of each voice. Of course, it is necessary to achieve a certain color for each voice, and within the limits of the corresponding color, the voice must have its own individual dynamic line, determined by the melody. Compliance with a reasonable measure, avoiding all sorts of exaggerations is very important when performing Bach's music, because. this is one of the main aesthetic principles of that era, which distinguishes Bach's art from the music of subsequent eras, in particular from the romantic one. It is necessary to instill in students a sense of proportion and style. After all, it is not uncommon for us to encounter such a student performance of Bach's music, in which a huge range of sonority occurs in a short segment - from pp to ff, change of tempo, unjustified accelerations and decelerations. But these idols of modern art, apparently, were not held in high esteem two centuries ago. In their treatises on the art of playing the harpsichord, the authors always and above all recommended beauty, subtlety and precision. Bach himself did not strive to achieve forced sonority, but a timbre, "as flexible as possible." Let's remember what they said about the game of Bach himself: "When he wanted to express strong affects, he did it not like many others - by exaggerated impact force - but ... by internal artistic means." When learning, various gradations of piano turn out to be the most suitable - with a good feeling of the fingertips. At the same time, it is easier to hear each voice and the ear does not get tired. The correct tempo of the work also requires special attention. Of course, extremely fast rates should be avoided, but too slow rates are unacceptable: the opinion that all fast rates used to be much slower than they are now is hardly true. Throughout the piece, the tempo should basically be uniform, but not frozen - it should be remembered that music is based not on counting, but on the free breathing of melodic thought, pushing with a rhythmic impulse and not constrained by a bar line. It is important to listen carefully to the polyphonic fabric. In order to hear more intense episodes, the student will have to involuntarily 4 slightly slow down the movement, and vice versa, in more rarefied places, return to the main movement. The same applies to the conclusions - there is no need to specifically require slowing down, you just need to show the student the whole structure of this conclusion, pay attention to the smallest details, invite him to listen to them. With such a sensitive attitude to the musical fabric, the performance tempo will not turn out to be frozen, but will change slightly noticeably - like breathing. Melismas in polyphony is a separate issue. One cannot agree with their arbitrary deciphering - after all, Bach himself was a supporter of accuracy and in a number of compositions he even wrote out turns that could be notated with certain signs. On the other hand, Bach (according to Creutz) rather casually wrote out the badges of jewelry, relying mainly on the experience of the performers. It cannot be regarded as a panacea for all ills and a table of decorations, inscribed by Bach himself in the “Notebook of Wilhelm Friedemn” - after all, it was intended for the very initial training. Surely Bach himself considered it only as a set of rules that were the starting point for further improvement (this is also evidenced by the fact that Bach did not “create” anything here, but almost rewrote this table from the French theorist d'Anglebert). melismatics entered the mind of the student as the most natural part of music - the main role in teaching was played by a visual demonstration of the teacher. Apparently, every teacher should be more inquisitive and study not only the Bach table, but also ancient treatises - primarily F.E. Bach in which the embellishment formulas are written out in the text "Little Preludes and Fugues" provide indispensable material for initial acquaintance Subsequent study with the more Bach complex clavier style of Bach's music must necessarily include associations with the previous one, finding parallels in simpler pieces . In the absence of many indications in the notes and in the presence of a lost living performing tradition, only the constant development of the foundations acquired at the beginning of training, the constant drawing of the student's attention to various aspects of performance (tempo, dynamics, decorations, etc.) will make it possible to develop a real performing understanding of Bach's music. Detention is one of the foundations of all Bach's polyphony. In Prelude No. 6 in d-moll and No. 7 in e-moll, literally the entire fabric consists of detentions, which are here the most important impulse for development. You can not perform these detentions with a flat, inexpressive sound. As a demonstration, you should take 3-4 bars of the e-moll prelude and show the student all three elements: 1) preparation (mi - in the third quarter), 2) detention (first quarter), 3) permission (second quarter). Then you need to work on the upper voice: take intensively mi and after that very coherently, on a slight rise of the hand, extract re a little quieter. Do the same by adding a middle voice, in which you need to rely somewhat on the first beat of F. Similarly, the student should work on the retentions throughout the play. In the future, he will repeatedly meet with detentions, and in such work they will never pass him by, but will be perceived by him as the most active and expressive element of the language. One of the most difficult problems (especially at an early stage of learning) is the actual holding (with fingers) of all voices. Unfortunately, not all teachers are irreconcilable to the violation of voice leading. How often students confuse voices when playing, one voice directly passes into another, etc. It is necessary from the very beginning to teach the correct work - to play each voice separately, to play with two hands two voices that must be performed with one hand. At the same time, it is necessary 6 for the timbre difference between these voices to immediately become clear. The fingers should feel this difference - turning or tilting the hand will help transfer support to the upper or lower voice. It is very useful sometimes to stop the student so that he himself hears the entire vertical, checks whether all his voices are heard. In Prelude No. 10 gmoll and No. 4 -D-dur, almost throughout the entire length, the right hand leads a duet of two voices. To teach a little pianist to hear all this fabric, to feel all sustained notes, not as stops in movement, but as its constituent element, is a task that justifies any expenditure of labor and time. It was Bach who was one of the first German composers, in whose work a new era was expressed, characterized by an interest in man, in the human person. This is primarily seen in his themes - bright, expressive, in complex altered harmonies, in bizarre rhythmic outlines. And in Bach's pedagogical activity, a new approach is felt. If we take such of his pedagogical works as inventions, then one of the main tasks that Bach set for these plays was to instill in his students a "taste for writing." Since here the music is of a completely new, individual genre and form, the awakening personality, creative intuition, will be consciously brought up on it. Inventions and symphonies are known in three author's editions. In 1720, the composer entered many of these works in the Notebook of his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann, where the two-voice pieces, originally called preambles (that is, preludes, introductions), were placed separately from the three-voice ones, which were then called "fantasies". The second author's edition has survived only in a copy of one of Bach's students. The richer ornamented pieces in this variant were arranged exclusively by keys: each three-part piece was preceded by a two-part piece of the same key. In the third, final edition of 1723, Bach again separated the inventions and symphonies 7 in the "Notebook of Wilhelm Friedemann" the first half of them were located on the steps to the major scale: C, d, e, F, G, and, then - on descending and altered steps in the keys of the second degree of kinship: h, B, A, g, f, E, Es, D, p. The order of the three-part inventions (here called fantasies) is similar. In the final version, Bach arranges them differently: C, c, D, d, E, e, F, f, G, g; A, a, B, h. As we can see, this time they are located independently of the relationship of keys, simply in ascending order with filling in a number of chromatic steps. Apparently, Bach applied here - with the necessary changes - the principle of arrangement, which he had already found for the Well-Tempered Clavier a year earlier (in 1722). The composer's double return to this collection shows that he attached particular importance to the Inventions and Symphonies. Almost not used in the music of that time, the definition of invention comes from the Latin invention invention, invention. Subsequently, this name was arbitrarily extended by the editors of Bach's compositions to symphonies, which in this way turned into three-part inventions. In piano pedagogy, the term "Symphony" does not create any inconvenience, while the current name "three-voice invention" does not quite legitimately combine two types of pieces that were strictly distinguished by their author. Despite the educational purpose of "inventions and symphonies", their expressive scope is unusually wide. “..Each of these plays is a miracle in itself and is unlike any other,” wrote A. Schweitzer, adding that these thirty plays could have been created “only by a genius with an infinitely rich inner world” About what goal he pursued Bach in Inventions is clearly evidenced by the lengthy text of the title page of the last edition of the cycle: “A conscientious guide in which clavier lovers, especially those eager to learn, are shown a clear way how to play cleanly not only with two voices, but with further improvement correctly and perform well the three compulsory voices, learning at the same time not only good inventions, but also correct development; the main thing is to achieve a melodious manner of playing and at the same time acquire a taste for composition. Composed by Yog.Seb.Bach, grand-princely Anhalt-Keten Kapellmeister. From the birth of Christ, the year 1723. For us, this annotated title is of double interest. It shows how highly the creator of "Inventions" appreciated the melodious manner of playing. To educate such a manner, to teach the performance of polyphony and to instill a penchant for composition - for the sake of this, "Inventions and Symphonies" were written. However, the first of the tasks formulated by the composer himself was by no means always adequately taken into account by piano pedagogy. Here is what F. Busoni wrote, for example, almost 80 years ago: “A detailed examination of the usual, widely practiced system of musical education led me to the conviction that Bach’s inventions in most cases are intended only to serve as dry piano-technical material for beginners. , and that on the part of gentlemen piano teachers, little and rarely is done to awaken in students an understanding of the deep meaning of these Bach creations ”The deep meaning of inventions is what the performer should first feel and reveal the meaning that does not lie on the surface and, unfortunately, is often underestimated even now. Much in the understanding of these pieces is achieved through an appeal to the performing traditions of the Bach era, and the first step on this path should be considered the acquaintance of the student with the real sound of those instruments (harpsichord, clavichord) for which Bach wrote his clavier compositions. The real feeling of their sounding enriches our "Imagination of the composer's work, helps to select expressive means, saves from stylistic mistakes, expands the auditory horizon." In this regard, an important and still unresolved question arises as to what instruments Bach intended his Inventions and other compositions for. This question has been repeatedly raised in the literature about Bach. Contradictory evidence, conjectures and points of view, often one-sided, were expressed. It is obvious that only a strictly differentiated approach to each work, consideration of its composition and coloring will allow in many cases to come to fairly well-founded conclusions. It goes without saying that the student should know everything essential about both the harpsichord and the clavichord. The clavichord is a small musical instrument with a quiet sound corresponding to its size. When a key of the clavichord is pressed, one string, associated with this key, is sounded. The clavichord is not characterized by bright colors and sound contrasts. However, depending on the nature of the keystroke, a melody played on the clavichord can be given some tonal flexibility, and even more than that, a certain vibration can be given to the tones of the melody. Advantages of the device: and the slightest disadvantages of changing the clavichord of pressing on are explained by the key; it causes a sensitive difference in sound shades, since the string that the metal tip (Tangent) touches when pressing the key is, as it were, directly under the performer's finger. The instrument can convey any subtle dynamic shades, their gradualness - crescendo and diminuendo - entirely depends on the will of the performer. The second advantage of the clavichord is the possibility of a very melodious, coherent playing. The disadvantages include a deaf and weak sound, although the sound is gentle, soft and warm. However, such a muffled tone is not at all suitable for the performance of a whole series of polyphonic works, in which each voice in the general movement must be heard with the utmost distinctness. In contrast to the subtle and soulful sonority of the clavichord, the harpsichord has a more sonorous and brilliant playing. Sound production on the harpsichord is made by touching the string with a feather or a metal rod. The harpsichord has a sharp, brilliant, piercing, but jerky sound. Its inherent gradations of sonority are achieved by changing keyboards (manuals). One for forte, the other for piano. 10 The arrangement of the keyboards in the instrument is terrace-like, one above the other. It is known that Bach also used improved harpsichords with a pedal keyboard, which had a special device (copula) for connecting the upper keyboard to the lower one. On the harpsichord, fast pieces with continuous uniformity of movement or pieces of the toccata type sound great (prelude from the 1st volume of the CTC in A minor). On the contrary, because of the short jerky sound, it is impossible to play pieces that require a melodious, lingering sound, gradual nuance. Only the clavichord could bring to life the inventions Es-dur, F-dur, G-dur, A-dur. Since the feeling of the instrumental nature of inventions and symphonies plays a very important role in determining their interpretation, our pupils, of course, must be knowledgeable in this area, moreover, they must realistically imagine the sound of both instruments. However, it is important not to forget that it is not blind imitation that dictates an appeal to the harpsichord or clavichord, but only the search for the most accurate definition of the nature of the pieces, correct articulation and dynamics. In slow melodious clavichord inventions it is legato-fused, deeply connected, and in distinct fast harpsichord pieces it is non-fused, finger-like, preserving the harpsichord separation of sounds. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote "Inventions and Symphonies" for his students as preparatory exercises before the fugue to achieve complete independence of the fingers and develop the ability to play complex polyphonic music on the harpsichord. The composer chose the name for his plays precisely, since his inventions are really full of inventions, witty combinations and alternations of voices. The term was first used by the composer Clement Janequin in the 16th century. How can we play Bach's works written for harpsichord and clavichord on our piano? How to use in this case those rich dynamic means that it possesses and which ancient keyboard instruments did not have? There can be no question of abandoning these funds. One of the remarkable properties of the piano is the ability to perform works of various eras and styles on it. And it is precisely the ability to find on the piano the means necessary to perform compositions of various styles that is one of the essential components of piano skill. It is necessary, first of all, to point out that when we talk about the use of piano dynamics in the performance of harpsichord music, we do not mean an attempt to imitate the sonority of ancient instruments on the piano; we are not talking about onomatopoeia, but about finding in the means of the piano the methods of dynamics necessary for the truthful performance of Bach's harpsichord works. Thus, the first concern of the leader will be to teach the student to extract from the piano a certain sonority that is necessary in this case. I would call this skill the ability to organize sonority according to the chosen plan, the ability to logically instrument on the piano. First of all, a clear understanding of the fact that different pieces may require the use of different piano colors for their performance will help to develop a specific instrumentation that corresponds to the very essence of the work. It is sometimes convenient to make this distinction clear to the student by means of figurative comparisons. For example, it is natural to compare the solemn, festive Little Prelude in C-dur with a short overture for an orchestra, in which both trumpets and timpani take part. It is natural to compare the thoughtful Little Prelude in e-moll with a piece for a small chamber ensemble, in which the oboe solo melody is accompanied by string instruments. The very understanding of the general nature of the sonority necessary for a given work will help the student develop the exactingness of his ear, help direct this exactingness to the realization of the necessary sonority. We see that the means of piano dynamics applied to the performance of a certain melody naturally fall into two groups that perform different functions. In one case, a certain instrumentation of the melody is created by means of dynamics. We will call the shades of this group instrumental shades. On the other hand, the means of dynamics can serve as a flexible, expressive and grammatically correct performance of a melody. The shades of this group will be called melodic shades. The change of registers and keyboards of the harpsichord is a means of creating instrumental shades. Clavichord playing is devoid of bright contrasts. However, the dynamic clavichord provides the performer with the means to give the melody subtle and flexibility and spirituality. The piano cannot compete with the harpsichord in its ability to accurately create contrasting timbres, but the piano surpasses the harpsichord in its ability to give the melody dynamic flexibility. And in this regard, the piano, as it were, develops what is inherent in the second ancient instrument - the clavichord. Thus, the piano gives to some extent the opportunity to combine the contrasting instrumentation of the harpsichord with the flexible, within the limits of this instrumentation, the performance of the melody by the clavichord. Melodic shades differ from instrumental ones in their very structure. They are more detailed, as they correspond to all the turns of the melody. Sometimes they are small: after all, they should not go beyond the limits indicated by this instrumentation. If the shades that play the role of instrumental ones are not difficult to identify in the musical text, then the melodic shades are difficult to fix, and sometimes even impossible. They should be spoken about, obviously, at the keyboard, and the teacher, rather than the editor, can help develop them. With all this, we can observe the difference between melodic shades and instrumental shades. If, when creating instrumentation, it is necessary to achieve clear differences in the strength of sonority, to recognize and work on them, then in melodic shades the goal is the opposite - to draw them so that they are perceived not as a difference in the strength of sonority, but as a difference in the expressiveness of intonations. Is all this difficult? Too difficult? Don't think. The leader should not be afraid of difficulties if it is a matter of teaching a child to “speak out” at the piano. A child is capable of learning this art. They just need to be guided intelligently and patiently. From the very beginning of learning, it is important to take some path of ordering. Once this order is introduced into the very first steps of training, it will be possible to develop a demanding ear, which can subsequently resolve more complex issues. I repeat, it is not a matter of rules, but of cultivating an ear that is exacting and striving for order. If we turn to the originals of Bach's works - to cantatas, orchestral suites, concertos - then in most cases we will meet with scores equipped with strokes. Bach also attached great importance to the designation of strokes in orchestral parts. So, for example, sometimes, due to lack of time, he let go of his hands the parts that were not corrected, but with strokes added. If Bach attached such importance to the articulation of his music, then how can one explain that, along with scores equipped with strokes and, there are scores devoid of stroke indications? The existence of unmarked texts does not mean, however, that the works recorded in them do not need a certain articulation. Both the scores marked and unmarked for some reason were created by the same author, and in any case, articulation remains the most important vital basis for the performance of Bach's music. We will begin our remarks on articulation with a question that most often arises in school practice, namely: what articulation style is the main one in the performance of Bach's clavier works? This refers to the alternative between two manners - the manners 14 of connected play and dissected play. Obviously, both of these opinions are wrong in their one-sidedness. It is pointless to decide whether the student should be taught to play forte or piano, taught to play allegro or adagio. It is clear that the performance requires mastery of both full-sounding light playing, and swift playing, and calm playing. But it is also pointless to solve the question: what is characteristic of Bach - legato or non legato? The art of articulating clavier works requires the development of both coherent and dissected playing, the development of these techniques, and their skillful opposition. The study of articulation is best to start with the study of two-voice works, in which each voice is assigned its own special articulation coloring. It is this case that is demonstrated by the examples of the Sinfonia in a-moll, the allemande from the French Suite No 6, the Little Preludes in E-dur and D-dur. The main intermotive articulation is the caesura. To establish a caesura between motives, to take a "breath" before the introduction of a new motive - is it possible to imagine a simpler means of developing in the student a clear idea of ​​the motive structure of the melody! The most undoubted type of caesura is the pause between motifs indicated by the author (example 39, Prelude W. K. I b-moll). Since we are talking about the performance of motives, the student should be taught to distinguish between the main types of motives. (Of course, at what point and in what amount information about the structure of motives should be communicated to the student, the teacher must decide). In this case, one should use the information that the student receives in solfeggio and theory classes. In any case, the student must distinguish between: 1. iambic motifs, which go from a weak time to a strong one and are often called off-beats; 2. Choreic motives, entering on a strong beat and ending on a weak one. 15 But one should not exaggerate the difficulties of studying the whole variety of strokes. Practice shows that a student who has mastered legato well has already prepared himself for mastering staccato. He who has developed a staccatissimo will not find it difficult to achieve a longer non legato. After all, the point is only to teach the student to listen to how he articulates, to teach him to understand that the nature of removing the hand from the key has an expressive meaning. We know that Bach himself intended light clavier pieces not for concerts, but for teaching. And we must consider the real tempo of the invention, the little prelude, the minuet, the march, the tempo that is most useful to the student at the moment. What pace is currently the most useful? The tempo at which the piece is best performed by the student. After all, if we do not consider it necessary at all stages of study to strive for the best performance, then it will turn out that we hope, through a large number of repetitions of a bad performance, to reach a good performance. Let us suppose, then, that we have recognized that the correct tempo is that very unhurried tempo at which the student best plays the piece. One should not, however, imagine this learning slow pace as a mere preparation for the final pace. Teaching tempo has as its main goal not a preparation for a faster tempo, but a deeper goal: to be a preparation for understanding music. The thought of achieving speed contains many harmful things. It creates the misconception that the main goal of the student is to move from a slower pace to a faster one. This performance obscures the main purpose of calm tempos - to give an opportunity to listen to the music. What a student acquires when working at a slow pace - an understanding of music - is the most essential. And it is important to teach him that it is the understanding of music that he considers his main achievement, something that should remain and gain a foothold in all future work. He should consider the achievement of a faster tempo to be a less significant circumstance and, moreover, admissible only if the basic quality of the performance is not violated. The value of restrained pace is manifested at all stages of work. It happens that a student who plays things quickly cannot play them slowly. Sometimes this circumstance is not even unexpected for him. He is aware of it, declares it, and is even dissatisfied if the leader suggests that he play the piece not at an easy fast tempo for him, but at a “difficult” slow one. All this is contrary to the basic requirements of study. It is impossible to allow execution at a fast pace, if the performance at a slow pace is not yet knitted. Another frequently occurring case. The student can complete the task at a slow pace, he can complete it at a fast pace. However, it is difficult to perform at an average pace. This again testifies to a flaw, to the fact that the developed mechanisms of movement do not obey the student's hearing and thinking. They only work at certain specific tempo levels. It should be ensured that the student, once having mastered a given work at a slow pace, would not immediately go to a fast pace, but would work through all the medium paces, preserving in each of them that meaningfulness and naturalness that he acquired already at the first stage of work. Ways to indicate tempo (and character). Let's consider three ways: 1) generally accepted Italian terms; 2) descriptive expressions in the native language; 3) metronome indications. Two words about using a metronome in your studies. The metronome makes it possible to study the instructions of various editors, compare your own ideas about the tempo with these instructions, make estimates, check the tempo from time to time; to check how the tempo is maintained, that is, how different the tempo at which the game ended is from the tempo at which it began, to what extent the tempo is maintained in various sections of the work. We see that the metronome as a teaching aid enables a number of checks. It is not necessary to allow the student to play the whole piece under the metronome. It would be harmful. However, it is necessary to require the student to be able to play with a metronome. The inability to coordinate one's playing with the beats of the metronome should be considered as some shortcoming that one must strive to eliminate. Without starting a conversation about working on inventions, let's note an important point when working on polyphony - fingering. It is important to carefully consider the fingering, to use the best individual features of the student's hand, to ensure a more perfect performance of the required artistic tasks. The problem arises in polyphonic music when playing 2 voices in the part of one hand. In such cases, complex fingering techniques are used: 1. Silent substitution 2. Shifting (5 through 4) 3. Finger sliding. In three-voice inventions, the student is faced with a new fingering challenge. Distribution of the middle voice between the parties of the right and left hands. The accuracy and smoothness of voice leading depends on the successful resolution of this problem. Fingering in clavier works of ancient music has a number of specific features. It is interesting to take into account those techniques that were especially common in the 17th and in the first half of the 18th century. We are talking about the execution of gamma-like sequences without the use of the first finger. So, for example, the ascending sequence 18 in the right hand can be played with the fingering: 3, 4, 3, 4; descending - fingering: 3, 2, 3, 2. These techniques give the game more flexibility. They retain their role in contemporary pianism as well. Particular attention should be paid to the fingering, which itself predetermines this or that phrasing. A typical example is the beginning of the C-dur Invention. From the same Invention, motif b is shown not by means of a caesura, but by a slight accentuation of the first tone of the motif. This accentuation can be facilitated, as already mentioned above, by a certain fingering, namely the use of the first (heaviest) finger on the first tone of each motive. When considering the fingering of a coherently performed three-voice polyphonic work, one should first of all determine the performance of the middle voice. It is clear that the lower voice is played with the left hand, the upper voice with the right. As for the middle voice, for the most part it can be distributed between two hands so that each can coherently perform the two-voice fragment assigned to it. However, on the piano there is a tool that helps to combine easy, free hand movements with the coherence of sound. This is the right pedal of the piano. Freeing the hand and achieving coherence are not the only functions of the pedal in the performance of piano polyphony. However, this topic is beyond the scope of this work. I will confine myself here to three remarks: 1. The pedal, taken at a strong time, may pursue the goal of prolonging chord tones. Doesn't this extension create some harmonic support, similar to the bass, so characteristic of Bach's polyphony? However, on the piano there is a tool that helps to combine easy, free hand movements with the coherence of sound. This is the right pedal of the piano. 19 Freeing the hand and achieving coherence are not the only functions of the pedal in piano polyphony performance. However, this topic is beyond the scope of this work. I will confine myself here to three remarks: 1. The pedal, taken at a strong time, may pursue the goal of prolonging chord tones. Doesn't this extension create some harmonic support, similar to the digital bass that is so characteristic of Bach's polyphony? 2. The pedal, taken at a weak time and removed at a strong one, emphasizes the movement of the out-beats (this technique is most clearly developed in Petri's editions). 3. The pedal enriches the sound of the piano, which is poorer in overtones than the harpsichord, clavichord and organ. Invention (from lat. inventio find, invention) - small two- and three-voice pieces of a polyphonic warehouse, written in various types of polyphonic technique. The most famous are 15 two-part “symphonies” by Bach. If the word “symphony” (Greek consonance) was already widespread, denoting mostly an instrumental work, then the word “invention” was rarely used in relation to music, but was usually used in the art of rhetoric, where it meant finding arguments that could be applied to development of thought. The latest manuscript, which is an indisputable autograph, is dated 1723. In it, the plays are arranged in the order in which they are known from all editions; two-voices are called inventions, three-voices - sinfonias. This manuscript undoubtedly represents the author's final version, which is evidenced by the accuracy with which it was prepared and the fact that it is provided with a title page, the title of which sets out in detail the pedagogical tasks of this collection. In these pieces, Bach combines learning on an instrument (playing polyphony, developing a melodious sound extraction) with learning composition20 (natural development, not bound by the framework of generally accepted schemes, interesting searches for new forms). But the inventions, despite their utilitarian and pedagogical purposefulness, are distinguished by a rich figurative content - they are true masterpieces of musical art. Not only a student, but also a mature musician, returning to inventions, each time will find something new for himself. Some numbers (especially 2-voice inventions for the perception of which the work of inner hearing and imagination is so important, complementing the really absent middle voices) require such inner concentration that they can only truly be understood by adults. Having created such a wonderful pedagogical collection, Bach limited himself to recording notes and decorations, leaving such important dynamics, tempo, phrasing, fingerings, and decoding of decorations unrecorded as an indication. All this information was communicated to students in the classroom. It is known from the words of Bach's students how important the composer attached to a live show, the teacher's game. It is noteworthy that Bach did not even indicate what instrument these works were intended for, because the clavier is a generic concept and in Bach's time included two completely different stringed keyboard instruments - the harpsichord and the clavichord. Bach's oral "performing tradition" has long ceased to exist, so one of the important tasks is the pedagogical editing of the text, recreating the author's intentions with a certain degree of reliability. Unfortunately, one of the most common editions in pedagogical practice, even of our time, is the first edition of Karl Czerny in 1840. C. Czerny, a student of Beethoven, a brilliant piano teacher (F. Liszt was one of his students), created a kind of edition of Bach's works (1791-1857). Its advantages were thoughtful fingering, convenient distribution of voices between hands. 21 But Czerny often "corrects" Bach: smooths out harmonic "roughness", softens sudden modulations, changes embellishments. In this edition, there is no lively, characteristic phrasing - continuous legato dominates, frequent changes of cresc and dim prevail. The tempos are exaggeratedly fast, there are a lot of slowdowns in tempo. Czerny claimed that in his editions of Bach's compositions he reproduced from memory the features of Beethoven's performance of these compositions. Czerny's edition gave the pianists a completely distorted, false portrait of the great composer. The problem of interpreting Bach's works occupied one of the central places in the work of Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) - a multi-talented person, one of the greatest pianists of his time, composer, piano teacher, expert in many languages, music writer on aesthetics. Busoni provides his editions not only with performance instructions (phrasing, dynamics, fingering, deciphering of decorations), but also with extensive notes. In the notes to the Inventions, much space is devoted to the analysis of form. Sometimes he advises you to mentally discard a section or, conversely, continue development in order to clearly imagine the symmetry or violation of such in the play. Busoni himself writes in the preface to the inventions: “The moment of composition is very important, which is usually passed by when teaching; at the same time, this moment - like no other means - is designed to develop the purely musical side of the student's talent and increase his critical sense. Recall that Bach himself in teaching sought to ensure that all elements of the work were realized by the students. “What you don’t understand, you can never do right,” he often told his students. The notes to the inventions contain a lot of remarks that give specific advice: which voice should be emphasized, which should be left in the background, how important it is to withstand all the lingering sounds so that polyphony is heard all the time. In the NB to the three-voice invention, to No. 9 in f-moll, Busoni tells in detail how 22, when performing a polyphonic work, all voices can be clearly audible. The execution should help to identify the equality of each of the 3 topics. But if you try to single out all the voices at the same time, you could hear that one voice only senselessly drowns out the other. Therefore, less attention should be paid to highlighting the soprano, on the other hand, the theme indicated by the number III (even if it takes place in the tenor or in the bass), due to its clear rhythmic outlines, will always be clearly perceived. Thus, when performing, it is necessary to attach special importance only to the third voice, in the other 2, only characteristic moments require stronger emphasis. Theme III appears in the upper voice only twice in the whole piece, and thus the performer is faced with the task of managing with one left hand the opposition of the two lower voices to each other; the most important point for this is the precise application of the appropriate fingering and learning to play with one hand two voices with varying degrees of strength. The form of the invention closely adjoins the form of the fugue and appears as a tripartite one. The first part is “exposition”, themes I and II appear in all voices in the modulation sequence: tonic - dominant - tonic. The second part opens with a modulating interlude - an intermediate episode that prepares and connects the various implementations of the theme, leading to As-dur. Three themes take place in this key and then in its dominant. The three-bar interlude that follows it finally leads to the key of c-moll. The third part repeats the second in the tonal ratio of the dominant. In order to finally consolidate the main key, the piece ends with a three-bar code. 23 In terms of content, this piece is probably the most significant section of the collection - it reveals in the interpretation of the triple counterpoint the clarity of form, the depth of feelings - the true music of "passions". The most intelligible and frequently performed inventions in the middle classes of music schools are 2-voice inventions. The most common are the invention No. 1 C-dur, No. 8 F-dur, No. 14 B-dur, etc. Invention C-dur can be classified as a tripartite one. The semi-measure theme is the basis of the entire composition. The theme runs four times alternately in upper and lower voices. Then four times holding her appeal downward move into the key of the dominant. Almost perfectly symmetrical to the first, the second movement ends in a parallel key, in which both voices exchange roles. The third and fourth measures are a loose imitation of the previous two. The doubling of the first two measures in the second part becomes more organic, in the third, where the theme in the main form and its counter-addition alternate step by step. This piece is characterized by a vigorous and rhythmic performance to the highest degree. Invention No. 8 F-dur is also three-part. The canon, going at the beginning strictly to the octave, jumps to the lower non, in order to break after that and mark the beginning of development. In the 2nd movement, there is a noticeably more lively modulation movement. The third part becomes an exact copy of the entire first part transported to its subdominant. This piece is fast and easy, and requires absolute precision and clarity in performance. Invention No. 14 B-dur - the theme of the piece is composed of two motifs clinging to each other, starting from the beat and following the sounds of a triad. The second part of the development, where only the first of them develops, should be considered as a variant of the syncopation, due to which the rhythmic stress required here is easily achieved. After an interlude - an intermediate episode - the initial construction is carried out in 24 keys of the dominant (similar to the answer). The conclusion of the first movement is a sixteen bar period. A single performance of a theme, extended by a final cadenza, cannot be an independent part. The eight final bars here should be considered as belonging to the second movement or "addition", included only to satisfy the need for symmetry. So, having considered several inventions, I would like to note some main points that should serve as a guide to the correct understanding of Bach's style. This style is distinguished, first of all, by masculinity, energy, breadth and grandeur. Soft nuances, pedaling, tempo rubato, even excessively smooth legato playing and too frequent piano in general should be avoided as contrary to Bach's character. Reproduction of the text, which does not allow for various interpretations, this concerns the accuracy of the execution of decorations and the distribution of the middle voice between the two hands in three-part constructions. Choosing a suitable fingering, avoiding changing fingers on a sustained sound. I would like to say a few words about the "Great Organist" ... The fact is indisputable. Bach was obviously an equally great clavier player. In any case, he had no equal among his German contemporaries, with the exception of Handel, who, however, left Germany and settled in London. Bach dreamed of meeting him, but the meeting did not take place. Bach spent many years at the organ, loved the "king of instruments", knew his acoustic, timbre, performing abilities like no one else - that's why Bach was so often called in to revise new organs in many cities, even remote from his place of residence (for example, from Leipzig in Kassel). 25 In his practical activities, Bach came into contact with many people, communicated with them, and earned honor and respect from many, even aroused feelings of admiration. The circle of close acquaintances is wide, but homogeneous. On the one hand, these are pastors and theologians. On the other hand - and this is the main thing - the musicians. He longed to meet them, and it can be said without exaggeration that he was personally acquainted with the best German composers of that time. Bach longed for these meetings, because he was interested in everything that was done in music, he strove to absorb it more into himself, to be aware of everything new - that which he had not yet been able to know. Bach discovered the thirst for knowledge of the "secrets" of the composer's craft in his childhood, when he rewrote the works of other authors for himself. During the life of I.S. Bach - he was then standing on the eve of his 50th birthday - a genealogy of his paternal family was compiled, revealing 53 relatives who were fond of music, for whom (except for a few) it was the main profession. The handwritten list, entitled "The Origin of the Musical-Bach Family", indicates seven generations. Johann Sebastian - a representative of the fifth generation, the recognized head of the "family" - was proud of this list, often returned to it, made additions regarding places of service and writings of his relatives. Bach died in 1750 at the age of 65. The date of death falls on the core of the century called the Age of Enlightenment. The time he lived was marked by huge shifts in public consciousness, in socio-political and cultural life. The Vienna School of Music was formed under the influence of enlightenment ideology. Albert Schweitzer in his monograph stated: “... Bach is the end! Nothing comes from him, but everything leads to him. In contrast to such a categorically formulated position, some researchers of the 20th century, also polemically sharpening, see in Bach not the end, but the beginning of a new era - that era, the peak of which is the Viennese classical school, crowned with the names of Haydn - Mozart - Beethoven. In everything related to music, Bach shows a rare awareness. He was versatile. And as a universal genius - unique. References: 1. N. Kalinina “Clavier music by I.S. Bach in the piano class” 2. I. Braudo “On the study of clavier works by J.S. Bach in the Music School” 3. ru.wikipedia,org Invention – Wikipedia 4. obraz.ruweb.net JSBach. Double Inventions. Toolkit. 5. Orpheus music.ru J.S. Bach. Keyboard music. Inventions. 27

Work on polyphony in the senior classes of the Children's Art School.
Rostovskaya Larisa Borisovna. Municipal budgetary institution of additional education "Children's Art School No. 3", Surgut A typical feature of piano literature is its polyphonic versatility. Polyphonic music poses a number of particularly difficult tasks for the pianist. He must simultaneously lead several melodic lines, several voices, informing each of them of his characteristic touch, dynamic plan, phrasing, and at the same time combining these voices into a single whole. The performance of polyphonic works requires the development of inner ear and polyphonic thinking. It is necessary to teach the student to hear well both the part of each voice and the combination of voices, to hear the theme, its development, and various oppositions to it. Much attention should be paid by the teacher to the student's ability to understand the musical notation of polyphonic music. The most important thing is that the student does not formally perform the musical text, but feels the originality of each voice, as well as their joint development. No wonder R. Schumann considered a good musician to be one whose music is “not only in the fingers, but also in the head and in the heart.” I would like to dwell specifically on the polyphony of J.S. Bach and the features of its performance. Bach's polyphony is a wonderful example of musical classics, and whether it is secular or spiritual, it is always saturated with a certain and significant content, extremely expressive, and polyphonic techniques do not diminish, but only enhance the expressiveness of its sound. The great dynamism of images, the contrast of sound effects, the desire for grandeur and pomp prevail in musical works. Therefore, an attempt to present Bach's work as works of only a specific educational form is not correct. The task of the teacher in working on the works of Bach is to most correctly reveal the full depth of the content in music and not to reduce the work on the work only to drawing themes and deciphering the decorations. It is also wrong to say that Bach's music should be performed without a pedal. Parsing (as in any work) is, of course, done without a pedal, and the performance is certainly with a pedal. Moreover, pedalization can be different: timbre, harmonic, and also connecting, especially when voice leading does not allow good communication with fingers. Bach's polyphonic creativity is very diverse in its forms, hence the variety of performance strokes: along with the non-legato stroke, legato is very important as one of the ways to achieve melodiousness.
In addition, Bach's polyphony requires a violation of the established fingering principles, thereby creating new techniques, in particular, typical in Bach's music is playing the 1st finger on the black keys, sliding the 1st finger from white to white, shifting the 3rd through 4 th and 4th through the 3rd. Thus, only the right attitude to Bach's music can ensure its true performance. How to learn polyphonic work? Like any piece of music, first of all it is necessary to imagine a polyphonic piece in the form of a certain musical whole, and a detailed work is only a necessary means for the realization and embodiment of the intended musical image. From a very young age, the student pianist should be taught a special approach to polyphonic pieces: they should be taught in such a way that the polyphonic structure of the composition is clear to the child. Each voice is separately passed first by notes, then by heart. At the same time, the student's attention is always focused not only on the attention of the obligatory details of the text - metric note durations, fingerings, ligatures, etc., but also on singing the melody. Any single voice in Bach's clavier work is a beautiful melody that needs to be sung in tune. It is important to teach this from childhood, as it is still not uncommon for students to treat polyphonic works as something boring, dry and far from music. In such an attitude of the student to the brilliant creations of the classics of polyphonic writing, the teachers themselves are to blame, who failed to reveal to the child the beauty contained in this music. So, the performance in a two-voice work of the part of each voice by heart expressively and absolutely accurately in relation to the text is an obligatory stage before learning with two hands. But even after the combination of two voices, part of the time should be devoted to constant work on the part of each voice. If a composition of three or four voices is taken, then first each voice is learned (according to notes) separately with the fingering that is affixed to the notes, then (according to notes) they begin to connect pairs of voices: 1 + 2, 1 + 3, 2 + 3, 2 +4 etc. These connections, performed again with precise fingering, should sound like duets of two singing voices. This is exactly how the choirmaster works: first with each group of choristers: sopranos, altos, tenors, basses, then he connects two groups, after achieving satisfactory results, a third is added to the two groups, the general rehearsal is only the final stage of all work, and every day there is still checking individual groups in different combinations. It is the same with the work of a pianist: after a well-learned performance of separate pairs of voices in a four-part composition, a third is added, excluding one of the voices in turn. After making sure that the student hears all three voices, got used to and learned the fingering of these voices and other details of the musical text, the teacher can allow all the voices to be combined. This is a very crucial moment, because if you now constantly learn all four
voices with both hands, then voice leading will inevitably become clogged, and all previous work will be in vain. Therefore, it is necessary to devote part of the time every day to checking individual paired combinations of voices in order to be sure of a good quality of performance. In addition, it should be required from the student to know the part of each hand separately by heart, regardless of how many voices are in these parts (of course, if the middle voice suddenly breaks off in the part of the left hand and passes into the part of the right hand, then when performed with one left hand you need to bring this voice to the end of the phrase). Such a solid knowledge of the parts of each hand (especially the left) separately by heart is necessary for confident performance on the stage, where, in addition to auditory memory, motor memory is of great importance. Finally, the entire polyphonic work under study should be divided into a number of small segments, denoting them with letters or numbers. From these places, the student should be able (at random) to start playing by heart with both hands together and with each hand separately. The training tasks listed above are necessary as a preparatory stage before the start of the artistic finishing of the entire work. We must always remember that a good performance of a polyphonic work cannot be prepared only by mechanical permutation, by a combination of the number of voices. The combination of all voices into a single whole work is a new stage, which also requires a qualitatively new work. At the same time, the performer implements his interpretative plan, not splitting the polyphonic texture into separate voices, but, on the contrary, combining the entire complex fabric into one whole. However, a working check of all the details of polyphony, carried out periodically, gives the teacher confidence that on the stage the student will “communicate” the performed work, and the percentage of his losses will not be large. (When an invention or fugue is played in the classroom and not taken out on the stage, the teacher can consciously reduce the level of exactingness to each of the listed stages of work). The patience and time that must be expended to master a polyphonic piece by the method described above will fully pay off with the clarity of thinking, confidence and ease with which the student can perform the learned piece on the stage. "It's hard to study - it's easy to fight," - this beautiful saying of A. Suvorov is also applicable to the work of a musician-performer. In the process of educating a student's polyphonic thinking, "high-speed" methods inevitably lead to negligence, superficiality, and often to outright "hack-work". Your goal is to teach the future performer not to be afraid of work, not to avoid difficulties; only having fallen in love with work, the performer can count on achieving some heights in his art. Consider, for example, C Major Invention #1. How to work on it? First of all, a new piece must be performed so that the student familiarizes himself with it.
in live sound, how the theme develops polyphonically, and most importantly, how it should all sound. Describe and show the structure of the work. At the heart of the invention lies the theme of a lively, joyful character. This is the grain from which the work grows, it is played almost continuously throughout the entire invention. In the C Major Invention, there are three similarly constructed movements. Each of the parts begins with an expositional construction (vols. 1-2, 7-10, 15-18). It is followed by an interlude of a developmental type, which leads to a reprise-like construction and a cadenza that completes the movement. Having studied the structure of the invention, you can proceed to work. It should be recommended that the student work not only as a whole, but also in parts (not in “pieces”, but in parts). First of all, you need to deal with the topic. Have the student play it in different keys, forward and backward, with left and right hand. Then let him play the theme (both types) and its imitation, starting with the lower, then with the upper voice. In all cases, the theme should be performed lively. It's important to feel how the sixteenths tend to the eighth (at the climax of the theme). It is also necessary to grasp the nature of this striving. In the process of work, it is sometimes useful to characterize the performance task in reverse form, so that it is easier for the student to grasp the most essential. In the sequence constructions of the middle sections, the aspiration of the sixteenth notes takes on a particularly joyful character. This melodic sequence must be played with an unrelenting resilience of the rhythm. To hear the theme better, the student can play the exposition without opposition. It can be practiced as follows: the teacher performs themes, and the student performs the oppositions, then vice versa. And, finally, the student plays for both: both themes and oppositions. By nature, the sounds of the opposition should differ from the theme, sound as if in the background. It is desirable that the listed exercises be played not only by notes, but also without notes - this will make you listen to yourself more actively and, with the help of hearing, find the place of opposition in the polyphonic fabric. List of references 1. Alekseev A. Methods of teaching piano playing. M., 1978 2. Braudo I. On the study of Bach's clavier compositions at a music school. M-L., 1965 3. Questions of piano pedagogy: Sat. articles, ed.V. Natanson. Issue. 3, M: Music 1971 4. Kalinina N. Bach's piano music in the piano class. L .: Music, 1974 5. Korto A. About piano art. M.: Music, 1965
6. Lyubomudrova N. Methods of teaching piano playing. M.: Muzyka, 1982 7. Timakin E. Education of a pianist. Methodological guide / Soviet composer 1989.

Municipal budget institution
Additional education
"District School of Arts"

Methodological report
"Polyphony of J.S. Bach"

Teacher Slobodskova O.A.

town October

Working on polyphonic works is an integral part of learning piano performing arts. The education of polyphonic thinking, polyphonic hearing, the ability to perceive differentially, and therefore hear and reproduce on the instrument several sound lines that combine with each other in the simultaneous development, is one of the most important and most difficult sections of musical education.
Working on polyphony is the most difficult section in the education of a musician. After all, piano music is all polyphonic in the broadest sense of the word. Polyphonic fragments are woven into the fabric of almost any piece of music, and often underlie the texture. Therefore, it is so important to bring the student to the perception of polyphonic music, to arouse interest in working on it, to cultivate the ability to hear polyphonic sound. If the student has not acquired sufficient skills in performing polyphonic music, i.e. does not know how to listen and reproduce several melodic lines, his playing will never be artistically complete.
The indifference of students to work on polyphonic music is known to all teachers of the music school. How often beginner musicians perceive polyphony as boring and difficult exercises with two hands! The result is a dry, lifeless performance. This work is difficult, it requires many years of systematic work, great pedagogical patience and time. You need to start from the first steps of learning, lay the foundations for polyphonic hearing, which, as you know, develops gradually.
When Anton Rubinstein was asked what was the secret of the magical effect of his playing on the audience, he replied: "I spent a lot of work to achieve singing on the piano." Commenting on this confession, G.G. Neuhaus noted: “Golden words! They should have been engraved on marble in every piano class." The attitude to the piano as a "singing" instrument united all the great Russian pianists, and now it is the guiding principle of Russian piano pedagogy. Now no one will dare to assert that the requirement of melodious playing is not necessary in the performance of polyphonic works or may be limited in their rights.
Meaningfulness and melodiousness - this is the key to the stylish performance of J.S. Bach's music. “Studying the easy clavier works of J.S. Bach is an integral part of the work of a schoolboy pianist. Pieces from A. M. Bach's Notebook, small preludes and fugues, inventions and symphonies - all these works are familiar to every schoolchild learning to play the piano. The educational value of Bach's clavier heritage is especially due to the fact that the instructive clavier works in the work of J.S. Bach are not a series of less significant pieces of little difficulty. The largest clavier works by Bach belong to the instructive ones,” wrote I.A. Braudo. The works of the polyphonic style are built on the development of one artistic image, on multiple repetitions of one theme - this core, which contains the entire form of the play. The meaning and the characteristic content of the themes of the polyphonic style are aimed at shaping, therefore the themes require from the performer the work of thought, which should be aimed at comprehending both the rhyme structure of the theme and the interval one, which is extremely important for understanding its essence.
Two-part inventions, and the composer has 15 of them, reflected the full power of Bach's genius, and are a kind of encyclopedia of pianistic art. What role J.S. Bach pursued in the inventions is clearly evidenced by the lengthy title of the title page of the last edition of the cycle: voices, but with further improvement, correctly and well perform the three mandatory voices, learning at the same time not only good inventions, but also correct development; the main thing is to achieve a melodious game, and at the same time acquire a taste for composition. The deep meaning of inventions is what the performer must first feel and discover. A meaning that does not lie on the surface, but is deeply embedded, but which, unfortunately, is often underestimated even now.
Much in understanding these pieces is achieved through turning to the performing traditions of the J.S. Students should be realistic about the sound of these instruments. The real feeling of their sound enriches our understanding of the composer's work, helps to display expressive means, protects against stylistic mistakes, and expands the auditory horizon. If there is no opportunity to get acquainted with these instruments at a concert, then you can listen to the recording. However, it is important not to forget that one should not blindly imitate these instruments, but seek the most accurate definition of the character of the pieces, correct articulation and dynamics. In slow, melodious "clavichord" inventions, the legato should be continuous, deep and coherent, and in clear, fast "harpsichord" pieces it should be non-fused, finger-like, preserving the harpsichord separation of sounds.
In pedagogical work, the disclosure of the meaning of Bach's music and his works is of great importance. Not understanding the semantic structures of Bach's works, they do not have the key to reading the specific spiritual, figurative, philosophical and aesthetic content embedded in them, which permeates every element of his work. A. Schwartz wrote: "Without knowing the meaning of the motive, it is often impossible to play a piece at the right pace, with the right accents and phrasing." Steady melodic turns-intonations, expressing certain concepts, emotions, ideas, form the basis of the musical language of the great composer. The semantic world of Bach's music is revealed through musical symbolism. The concept of a symbol cannot be unambiguously defined due to its complexity and diversity. Bach's symbolism is formed in line with the aesthetics of the Baroque era. It is characterized by a wide use of symbols. The literal translation of this word from Italian means "strange, bizarre, artsy." Most often it is used in relation to architecture, where baroque is a symbol of grandeur and splendor.
The life and work of J.S. Bach are inextricably linked with the Protestant chorale and his religion, and activities as a church musician. He constantly worked with the chorale in a variety of genres. It is quite natural that the Protestant chant became an integral part of Bach's musical language. Based on the study of the composer's cantata-oratorio works, the identification of analogies and motive connections of these works with his clavier and instrumental works, the use of choral quotations and musical-rhetorical figures in them, B.L. Yavorsky developed a system of Bach's musical symbols. Here are some of them:
Rapid ascending and descending movements expressed the flight of angels;
Short, fast, sweeping, breaking figures depicted jubilation;
The same, but not too fast pieces - calm contentment;
Jumps down at long intervals - sevenths, nones - senile infirmity. The octave is considered a sign of calmness, well-being.
Even chromatism of 5-7 sounds - acute sadness, pain;
Going down two sounds - a quiet sadness, worthy of grief;
Trill-like movement - fun, laughter.
As we can see, musical symbols and choral melodies have a clear semantic content. Their reading allows deciphering the musical text, filling it with a spiritual program. True music is always programmatic, its program is a reflection of the process of the invisible life of the spirit. From this we can conclude that it is important to acquaint the student with this musical symbolism in order to more deeply understand the meaning of Bach's brilliant creation.
The works of the ancient polyphonic style are built on the development of one artistic image, on repeated repetitions of the theme - this core, which contains the entire form of the play. The meaning and characteristic content of the themes of this style are aimed at shaping. Therefore, the themes require from the performer, first of all, the work of thought, which should be aimed at comprehending both the rhythmic structure of the theme and the inteoval one, which is extremely important for understanding its essence. It follows that the student's attention to the topic should be riveted even before the analysis of the play begins. This approach fundamentally changes the student's attitude to inventions, as it is based on specific knowledge, a preliminary and thorough analysis of the topic itself and its transformations in the work.
When working on the works of J.S. Bach, the following stages are very important:
Articulation - accurate, clear pronunciation of the melody;
Dynamics - terrace-like;
Fingering - subject to articulation, and is aimed at revealing the convexity and distinctness of motive formations.
The student's attention should be focused on the topic. Analyzing it, tracing its multiple transformations, the student solves a kind of mental problem. The active work of thought will surely cause a corresponding influx of emotions - this is the inevitable consequence of anyone. Even the most elementary creative effort. The student analyzes the topic on his own or with the help of a teacher, determines its boundaries and nature. The main method of working on a theme is to work at a slow pace, each motive, even submotive, separately, in order to feel and meaningfully convey the entire depth of intonational expressiveness. A certain time must be allotted for an exercise in which the student first performs only the theme (in both voices), and the teacher performs the opposite, then vice versa. But any exercise should not turn into meaningless playing. It is necessary to direct the student's attention to the intonation of the theme and opposition. Memorizing each voice by heart is absolutely necessary, since work on polyphony is, first of all, work on a monophonic melodic line, saturated with its own special inner life, into which you need to merge, feel, and only after that proceed to the combination of voices.
The student should also be explained such an unknown concept as inter-motive articulation, which is used to separate one motive from another with the help of a caesura. The skills of the correct division of the melody were given great importance in the Bach era. Here is what F. Couperin wrote in the preface to the collection of his plays: "Without hearing this little pause, people of fine taste will feel that something is missing in the performance." It is necessary to acquaint the student with different ways of designating inter-motive caesura:
Two vertical lines;
The end of the league;
The staccato sign on the note before the caesura.
At the very first lessons, the teacher must trace, together with the student, the development of the theme, all its transformations in each voice. A very significant moment in the performance of Bach's polyphony is the fingering. The correct choice of fingers is a very important condition for competent, expressive performance. It should be aimed at revealing the convexity and distinctness of motive formations. The correct solution to this issue is prompted by the performing tradition of the era of J.S. Bach, when articulation was the main means of expression.

List of used literature:

Kalinina N.P. Keyboard music at the music school. M., 2006
Nosina V.B. Symbolism of J.S. Bach's music. M., 2006
Shornikova M. Musical literature. The development of Western European music. "Phoenix", 2007.

MUNICIPAL EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION OF ADDITIONAL EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
CHILDREN'S MUSIC SCHOOL
SHCHELKOVSKY MUNICIPAL DISTRICT
MOSCOW REGION

Methodical message

"Work on polyphony in the lower grades of music school".

Teacher

Shchyolkovo-2011

Work on polyphony in music school

Folk music, especially the music of the Russian people, is always imbued with the spirit of the ensemble, collectivity, carries the traditions of polyphony.

The melodic melodiousness of folk music is by its nature not monophonic. She strives for collective intonation, for revealing herself through the chorus, through polyphony. Classical music - in opera, in symphony, in chamber forms - has always given high examples of rich and diverse polyphony, which has its origins in the folk tradition. Polyphony, as an active force in music, could not but attract the creative attention of composers of various trends throughout the history of music. Composers have never treated polyphony with indifference. Learning polyphony is the key to mastering the art of playing the piano. After all, piano music is all polyphonic in the broadest sense of the word. To master the piano well, as Yuri Bogdanov said, one must play etudes and works. Therefore, in the initial years of study at a children's music school, it is necessary to cultivate interest and love for music, and, consequently, for polyphonic music.

The best guiding thread in the world of music for a child is a song. It is she who enables the teacher to interest the student in music. The first-grader willingly sings familiar songs, listens with interest and guesses the different nature of the pieces played by the teacher (funny, sad, dancing, solemn, etc.) Along the way, the baby should be told that sounds, like words, convey content, different feelings . I usually conduct a “game” with a student at the first lesson to determine the nature of the music. First, I play different pieces for him, where he must determine the mood that the composer conveyed, then I ask the student to determine the nature of the music by name or by a picture that clearly conveys the mood. Children especially like the pieces from the collection "Introduction to Music" by Artobolevskaya. For example, the play "Where are you, Leka", according to the picture, the children tell a whole story about why the dog is sad. The picture accompanying the Minuet clearly conveys the era of that time, the costumes of the dancers at the ball. According to the stories of children, one can determine the horizons of the child, his vocabulary, sociability, etc. This is how musical impressions gradually accumulate. Melodies of children's and folk songs in the easiest monophonic arrangements for piano is the most intelligible educational material for beginners in terms of content. Careful choice of repertoire is of great importance in the musical success of the student. Songs should be chosen simple, but meaningful, characterized by bright intonational expressiveness, with a clearly defined culmination. Thus, from the first steps, the focus of the student's attention is the melody, which he expressively sings, and then just as expressively tries to "sing" on the piano. The expressive and melodious performance of monophonic songs-melodies is later transferred to the combination of two of the same melodies in light polyphonic pieces. The naturalness of this transition is a guarantee of maintaining a keen interest in polyphony in the future.

The polyphonic repertoire for beginners is made up of light polyphonic arrangements of folk songs of an under-voiced warehouse, close and understandable to children in their content. The teacher talks about how these songs were sung by the people: she began to sing the song, then the choir (“voices”) picked it up, varying the same melody. For example, the song "Oh, you, winter - winter ...". It can be performed in a "choral" way, dividing the roles: the student plays the lead part, and the teacher on the other piano "depicts" the choir, which picks up the lead melody. After two or three lessons, the student performs the “accompaniment voices” and is clearly convinced that they have no less independence than the lead melody.

The active and interested attitude of the student to polyphonic music depends entirely on the method of work of the teacher and his ability to bring the student to the figurative perception of the basic elements of polyphonic music.

From the first grades of the school, the student must get acquainted with all types of polyphonic writing - subvoice, contrast, imitation - and master the elementary skills of performing two, and then three voices in light polyphonic works of various nature. But it is hardly advisable to introduce the first grader to the term imitation. It is easier to reveal this concept using examples that are accessible and close to the baby. So in plays like the children's song "On a Green Meadow ...", you can play the initial melody an octave higher and figuratively explain to the student the imitation, that is, the repetition of a motive or melody in another voice, as a familiar concept of ECHO. The perception of imitation will be greatly enlivened by playing in an ensemble: the student plays the melody, and the teacher plays its imitation (ECHO), then vice versa. Imitation is the main polyphonic way of developing the theme. This technique is especially useful in plays where imitation is accompanied by a melody in a different voice, as in piece No. 17 from the collection "Piano ABC": it could be called "Cuckoos", so much the comparison of imitation with the roll call of two cuckoos suggests itself here. In the named collection there are many etudes and pieces built imitatively on the themes of a song and dance character (etudes No. 17, 31, 34, 35, 37). The best pedagogical material for educating a pianist's polyphonic sound thinking is the clavier heritage, and the first step on the way to understanding polyphony is the well-known collection called Anna Magdalena Bach's Notebook. The small masterpieces included in the Music Notebook are mostly small dance pieces - polonaises, minuets, marches, distinguished by an extraordinary richness of melodies, rhythms, and moods. " Notebook" - a kind of family home music albums. This included instrumental and vocal pieces of various kinds. These pieces, both his own and those of others, were written in a notebook by his own hand, sometimes by his wife Anna Magdalena Bach, there are also pages written in the children's handwriting of one of Bach's sons. Vocal compositions - arias, chorales included in the collection - were intended for performance in the home circle of the Bach family. There are nine Minuets in the collection. At the time, the Minuet was a common, lively, well-known dance. It was danced both at home and at fun parties and during solemn palace ceremonies. In the future, the minuet became a fashionable aristocratic dance, which was carried away by prim courtiers in white powdered wigs with curls. A good illustration of the balls of that time in Artobolevskaya's collection "First Encounter with Music". The attention of children should be drawn to the costumes of men and women, which to a greater extent determined the style of dancing: the women wore creolins, immensely wide, requiring smooth movements, while the men had stocking-covered legs in elegant high-heeled shoes, with beautiful garters - bows at the knees. The Minuet was danced with great solemnity. The music reflected in its melodic turns the smoothness and importance of bows, squats and curtsies. After listening to the Minuet performed by the teacher, the student determines its character, that it resembles more a song or a dance, therefore the character of the performance should be soft, smooth, melodious, in a calm, even movement. Then it is necessary to draw the student's attention to the difference between the melody of the upper and lower voices, their independence and independence from each other, as if they were sung by two singers: the first high female voice is a soprano, and the second low male voice is a bass, or two voices perform two different tool. I. Braudo attached great importance to the ability to instrument on the piano. “The first concern of the leader,” he wrote, “will be to teach the student to extract from the piano a certain, necessary sonority in this case.

Of great educational importance for hearing is the performance of two voices in different instrumentation. To this end, it is useful to play the first studied polyphony samples together with the student so that he really hears the combination of two voices. One voice is performed by the teacher, the other voice by the student. If there are two instruments, it is useful to play both voices on two instruments at the same time - this gives each melodic line more relief. It is also useful to separate voices through an octave (upper - flute, lower - violin). The upper voice is in place - the lower one is an octave down, the lower one is in place - the upper one is up an octave. As much as possible, voices can be divided into two octaves. If two voices pass simultaneously in the part of any hand, we can recommend that the student first play these constructions with both hands: in this way it will be easier for him to achieve the desired sonority and the goal of the work will become clearer. It is necessary to ensure that the student can play each voice from beginning to end completely and expressively. The value of working on voices by students is often underestimated; it is carried out formally and is not brought to that degree of perfection when the student can actually perform each voice as an independent melodic line. After careful study of individual voices, it is useful to teach them in pairs. To ensure the necessary auditory control, it is expedient, when performing voices, to play them for the first time not from beginning to end, but in separate small constructions, returning repeatedly to the most difficult places and playing them several times. A very effective way for advanced students to work is to sing one of the voices while others are played on the piano. It is also useful to sing polyphonic polyphonic works in chorus. This contributes to the development of polyphonic hearing and introducing students to polyphony. Sometimes it is useful to teach two voices, playing in turn in each of them only those segments that should prevail in their semantic meaning in a two-voice performance. If there are three or more voices, it is useful to work on each pair of voices. So, for example, with a three-voice presentation, it is useful to separately teach the upper and middle voices, upper and lower, lower and middle. It is very useful to play all the voices, focusing your attention on any one of them. Remove the middle voices (they are like filling), and lead the extreme ones, they are like a skeleton.

The upper voice is melodic, the lower voice is harmonic. Use timbre fantasies: lead one voice on the forte, removing the rest on the piano. When the middle voice stands out, it is difficult, but very useful to do. To hear the lower voice - change the voices crosswise, transfer the lower voice to the upper one, and the upper one to the lower one, this is difficult, but effective. Be sure to hear long notes and delayed ones. To hear harmony formed by several voices - (vertical). Hear horizontal. Play slowly and with stops on the downbeat.

Polyphony is characterized by polydynamics, and for its clear reproduction one should, first of all, avoid dynamic exaggerations, one should not deviate from the intended instrumentation until the end of the piece. A sense of proportion in relation to all dynamic changes in any work is a quality without which it is impossible to convey its music stylistically correctly. Bach does not have an outpouring of emotional feelings, but a concentration of feelings - self-restraint, turning inward. Everything that is written in the text should sound: clarity, accuracy, melodiousness in sound. What is progressive in the text is played legato, the jump is the removal of the hand. Bach has equal parts, a strong part is not distinguished. He puts down the phrasing in size. The main thing is not to break the line, and the beginning of the topic is not as important as its end. Bach creates surround sound, harmonic fullness. In any work on Bach's clavier works, one should be aware of the following basic fact. In the manuscripts of Bach's clavier compositions there are almost no performance instructions. Then it was accepted, because there were no musicians - performers in our understanding of the word, on the other hand, Bach meant almost exclusively the performance of his works by his sons and students, who were well acquainted with his principles. With regard to dynamics, it is known that Bach used only three designations in his compositions, namely: forte, piano and, in rare cases, pianissimo. Bach did not use the expressions crescendo, dim, mp, ff, forks denoting amplification and weakening of sonority, and finally, accentuation marks. The use of tempo notation in Bach's texts is just as limited. And where they are, they cannot be taken in the modern sense. His ADAGIO GRAUE pace is not as slow as ours, and his PRESTO is not as fast as today's. There is an opinion that the better you play Bach, the slower you can play it, the worse you play, the faster you need to take the tempo. Liveliness in Bach's works is based not on tempo, but on phrasing and accents. Of the many tasks that stand in the way of studying polyphony, the main one is work on melodiousness, intonational expressiveness and the independence of each voice separately.

2 - in different, almost nowhere coinciding phrasing (for example, in bars

3 - in the mismatch of strokes (legato and non legato).

4 - in the mismatch of culminations (for example, in the fifth - sixth measures, the melody of the upper voice rises and leads to the top, and the lower voice moves down and rises to the top only in the seventh measure)

6 - in the mismatch of dynamic development (for example, in the fourth measure of the second part, the sonority of the lower voice increases, and the upper one decreases).

Clavier works are for the most part classified as works with unmarked articulation. Those uncomplicated clavier works that make up the main Bach repertoire of a schoolboy are completely devoid of any performance instructions.

Of the 30 inventions and symphonies, only the symphony in F minor contains two leagues. From all of the above, it is clear that single performance instructions found in Bach's manuscripts can serve as valuable material for research on the performance of early music.

We know that he himself intended light clavier pieces not for concerts, but for teaching and home music-making. Therefore, the real tempo for the invention, the little prelude, the minuet, the march is to consider at the moment the tempo that is most useful for the student. What pace is the most useful at the moment. The tempo at which the piece is best performed by the student. Teaching tempo has as its main goal not preparation for fast tempo, but preparation for understanding music. The fast pace makes it impossible to listen to the music.

What the student gains when working at a slow pace - an understanding of music - is the most essential. You should imagine the pace, as if they were being sung, sing them in your voice or mentally to yourself. This is the easiest way to set the pace, devoid of haste and immobility. But one should also make sure that the slow tempo does not turn into a series of slow, monotonous movements that have no connection with the music itself.

MATERIALS USED:

1. A. Alekseev "Methods of learning to play the piano."

2. G. Neuhaus "On the art of piano playing"

3. I. Braudo "On the study of Bach's clavier compositions in a music school."

4. Materials of refresher courses.

5. N. Kalinina "Bach's clavier music in the piano class."

MOUDOD Children's Music School of the Shchelkovsky Municipal District of the Moscow Region

materials

for certification

Class teacher

piano

Kuznetsova

Nadezhda Mikhailovna