Description
The whole piece is built from one small figure, the one heard in its opening two beats. It is the first of the fifteen Inventions Bach assembled in 1723, and in his preface he states the purpose outright: not merely to play the notes, but to acquire a cantabile manner of playing and along the way a first taste of composition. The set grew out of the teaching notebook he kept for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, and three centuries later it is still where most players meet counterpoint first.
The right hand states the figure, the left follows, and from there the two voices converse as equals through inversions and modulations. The key is C major, the metre common time, and there is no accompaniment anywhere in it.
The difficulty of this intermediate piece lies in independence rather than speed. Each hand carries its own line, and every time the subject passes between them the question of which voice should lead changes hands too. Hands separately, then both slowly: here more than almost anywhere, the quality of the slow practice is the quality of the result.
A set of 15 two-part counterpoint studies (BWV 772-786) that Bach composed for his son's musical education.
Browse all songs in Two-Part Inventions →Sheet Music
Sheet music provided by Mutopia Project
What this piece teaches
Invention No. 1 in C major. The short motif heard at the start passes between the hands and, varied and turned upside down, builds the whole piece.
How to practise it
- Once you know the opening motif, follow the score view and look for every place it returns - sometimes upside down.
- When the motif moves to the left hand, the left hand leads; step the right hand back at that moment.
- Put the hands together at 0.5x and raise the speed only while you can still hear both voices.
Practice guides using this piece
Slow practice: playback speed and the A-B loop
How to slow a hard passage down, loop it and bring it back up to tempo in steps - and when to change the note speed instead.
Preparing and opening your own MIDI file
Where to find MIDI files you may use, what makes a file work well here, how the player treats tracks, pedal and channel volume, and fixes for common problems.
Reading the difficulty level and score, and choosing your next piece
How the beginner / intermediate / advanced levels and the 1-10 difficulty score are worked out, and how to use them to choose what to play next.
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 →