Description
With 757 notes, the most of the fifteen here, the twelfth three-part Sinfonia packs fine motion into a short playing time - a strongly virtuosic piece in A major. It begins the final stretch of the set, turning from the flowing minor of No. 11 to a brilliant major key.
The three voices move almost without pause through its 4/4 bars, subject and countermelody intertwining as they go. A density of 757 notes in 96 seconds stands out even in this collection, and the strings of fine notes create the bright sound of the key. The range, E2 to B5, is fairly narrow and fits on a 61-key keyboard. The key has three sharps.
As an advanced piece it demands agile fingers, and within the thick flow of notes each line must still be heard. First lower the playback speed a long way and follow the three voices one at a time in the score view. Checking with the hand colours where the right hand holds two voices makes fingering easier to settle. Isolate the hard spots with an A-B loop, put accuracy first, and bring the speed back up a little at a time.
A set of three-part counterpoint studies (BWV 787-801) that expand on the two-part Inventions, teaching more complex polyphony.
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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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