Description
Running lightly in the unusual metre of 9/16, this is the last of the fifteen three-part Sinfonias. The order of keys, rising by semitone, arrives here at B minor, and after the calm B-flat major of No. 14 the set closes in the taut sound of a minor key.
Each of its three beats to the bar splits into three sixteenth notes, a fine-grained compound metre that gives the music a quick, running motion. The three voices hand the subject around and constantly exchange fast figures. It has 670 notes in 88 seconds, with a range from C#2 to B5 that fits on a 61-key keyboard.
Keeping the small groupings of 9/16 while playing three voices distinctly in fast motion is the advanced-level task here. First lower the playback speed a long way to feel the groups of three, and find where the subject appears in the score view. Sort out the hands with the hand colours, repeat the places where fast figures overlap with an A-B loop, and raise the speed little by little without losing the lightness.
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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