Description
A long-breathed, singing subject is set against a countermelody of quick sixteenth notes in the other hand in this E-flat major Invention. The fifth of the set, it is one of the pieces that asks at once for both aims Bach names in his preface: playing two voices cleanly and acquiring a singing style of playing.
The roles change during the piece, so the subject appears in both the right and the left hand. In 4/4 and ranging from E-flat 2 to C6, it has 734 notes in about 75 seconds: the most of any of the fifteen, and among the busiest in notes per second.
The central challenge is playing a singing melody in one hand while keeping quick notes even in the other. If the busy part grows too loud the melody is buried, so use the hand colours to see which hand has the subject and balance the dynamics accordingly. Slow the playback speed and listen only to the melody first, then shift your attention to the countermelody; the relation between the two lines will come into focus.
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
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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