Sinfonia No.2 in C minor

Description

Keeping the tonic C of No. 1 but turning to the minor, this is the first minor-key piece among the three-part Sinfonias. The collection moves upward by semitone, pairing major and minor keys on the same tonic - C major, C minor, D major, D minor and so on - so that the fifteen pieces pass through fifteen keys.

Its 12/8 - four beats to the bar, each divided into three - is a compound metre that gives the music a gentle rocking motion. That is the opposite of No. 1, with its straight scales in 4/4, and here the three voices overlap to build the colour of the minor key. It has 732 notes in 99 seconds, with a range from C2 to C6 that fits on a 61-key keyboard.

An intermediate piece, its point in 12/8 is to feel the groups of three while moving in four broad beats; laying out the small notes evenly makes it flat. Lower the playback speed to check how the beats group, and follow the voice entries in the score view. The hand colours show who has the middle voice, and an A-B loop over the places where voices cross prepares you to play it through without losing its minor-key shading.

A set of three-part counterpoint studies (BWV 787-801) that expand on the two-part Inventions, teaching more complex polyphony.