Description
Here the left hand follows the right hand's melody exactly, an octave lower and a little later: this Invention is a canon. It is No. 2 of the fifteen two-part keyboard pieces Bach wrote out in fair copy in 1723, arranged in rising keys from C major, and it is in C minor, sharing its keynote with No. 1. His preface names their aims: to play two voices cleanly, to find good musical ideas and develop them, and to acquire a singing style of playing.
Partway through the roles reverse, with the left hand leading and the right hand following. The metre is 4/4, and the range runs from C2 to C6, with 634 notes in about one minute forty-five.
Treating two strictly imitating voices as equals is what this intermediate piece asks of you. In a canon either hand alone sounds as if its melody breaks off, so start by using the hand colours to tell the leading voice from the following one. Slow the playback speed and listen for the same melody heard twice, one entry after the other; the structure becomes something you understand by ear.
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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