Description
A singing line emerges from continuous quick motion in this A major Invention. As No. 12 it opens the final stretch of the collection and, like the 9/8 of No. 10, is in compound time, here 12/8. It has more notes than most in the set, and its longer phrases make it a piece for a stage close to completing the set.
Four large beats to the bar, each divided into three, carry a stream of quick notes, and the subject passes between the hands. The range runs from C#2 to B5, with 685 notes in about 73 seconds.
It tests both the technique to connect quick figures smoothly and the musicality to make them heard as melody rather than a string of notes. Feeling 12/8 in four large beats keeps the quick notes from dragging you along. Slow the playback speed to check where each beat falls, and watch the grouping of the figures in the score view as you practise; the melody within the flow will come into view.
A set of 15 two-part counterpoint studies (BWV 772-786) that Bach composed for his son's musical education.
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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.
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