Description
Placed straight after the bright D major No. 3, the fourth three-part Sinfonia stays on the keynote D but turns to the minor. This follows from the set's pairing of major and minor on each tonic, and lets you hear in succession how much the character of a key changes on the same keynote.
Its 547 notes in 96 seconds of 4/4 are fewer for its length than No. 3 uses, and rather than filling every moment with quick motion it lets you hear the shape of each of the three lines and the tension of the harmony. The range, D2 to B-flat 5, is fairly narrow and fits comfortably on a 61-key keyboard.
With fewer notes, this intermediate piece lets the length of each note and the density of sound where voices overlap be heard directly. This is not a piece you can carry by speed, so lower the playback speed to trace each line and use the score view to find the notes that are held for a long time. Settle the middle voice with the help of the hand colours, and use an A-B loop to listen again to any spot where the sound turns muddy. Hearing it right after No. 3 shows clearly how the same keynote sounds in major and in minor.
A set of three-part counterpoint studies (BWV 787-801) that expand on the two-part Inventions, teaching more complex polyphony.
Browse all songs in Three-Part Sinfonias →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.
View all works by Bach →