Description
The left hand imitates the right's rising broken-chord subject exactly, one bar behind, in this F major Invention, known as the brightest and most high-spirited of the fifteen. The 1723 set was assembled to teach two-voice singing tone and the rudiments of composition; what No. 8 handles is keeping a leaping figure light while the hands chase one another through it.
Much of the piece runs on that strict canon, so the two voices stay in the same shape throughout and the drive of its triple time never lets up. Later the subject arrives inverted and the momentum turns downward.
The piece needs both accuracy in the leaps and a touch light enough not to weigh them down. Concentrating on hitting the notes tends to harden the sound, and hardness costs the piece the very buoyancy it lives on. Move from the arm, keep the fingertips light, and practise the landings on their own before taking the tempo up.
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. 8 in F major. A motif that springs up a broken chord, with the left hand following close behind the right as in a canon.
How to practise it
- Check that the following left hand has the same character as the right hand it imitates.
- It is a lively piece, but clarity at 0.75x comes before speed.
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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