Description
A canon at the tenth in D minor and 12/8: the following voice takes up the leading voice's melody a tenth (an octave plus a third) away. Bach's late Art of Fugue, published in 1751, sets four such canons beside its fugues, all derived from one subject. Listed on this site as Contrapunctus XIV, it is usually numbered among the canons rather than with the fugues.
Only two voices are involved, and as in the canon at the twelfth, the combination of the first half returns in the second turned upper for lower. At 1,396 notes in 271 seconds it is relatively sparse among the four canons, and its range, D2 to D6, fits on a 61-key keyboard.
Rated advanced, it asks you to keep both lines independent and let the listener hear which one leads. Distinguish the two voices with the hand colours, and practise passages isolated with the A-B loop at a reduced playback speed. Comparing the two halves in the score view makes the exchange of voices clear.
A broad collection of standalone piano pieces not belonging to any specific set, offering hundreds of varied character pieces to explore and compare.
Browse all songs in Piano Pieces →Sheet Music
Sheet music provided by Mutopia Project
About the Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Johann Sebastian Bach was the towering figure of German Baroque music, serving for decades as Cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. Renowned for his mastery of counterpoint, he laid the foundations of keyboard music with works such as The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Inventions. This site includes minuets and polonaises from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, the Inventions and Sinfonias, and fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier. The Notebook pieces are catalogued with BWV Anh. (appendix) numbers, but many are by other composers - Petzold's minuets among them - or by no one known, and most of their song pages give the current view of who wrote them.
View all works by Bach →