A contemporary newspaper reported that the cause of his death at age 65 was "from the unhappy consequences of a very unsuccessful eye operation", performed by the British surgeon John Taylor. Towards the end of his life Bach went blind. The Art of Fugue, a vast compendium of contrapuntal techniques, remained unfinished. The B minor Mass is an exemplar of the mastery he had attained in all the main sacred genres, while pieces like the Goldberg Variations and the Variations for organ on Vom Himmel hoch explore canonic writing. How he was able to stay on this exalted level of creativity for so long remains a mystery, as his resources actually were quite limited: when he set out his minimum requirements for a well-regulated church music, he received in response from the church authorities only a threat to reduce his salary.ĭuring his last years Bach created works of a somewhat abstract and general nature. This led Bach to apply for the post of Thomaskantor at Leipzig, where during his first five years Bach completed three annual cycles of cantatas, the St John (1724) and St Matthew (1727) Passions, and many other sacred works. When Prince Leopold married, the good times in Cöthen ended, as his wife resented his preoccupation with music. The following year he married Anna Magdalena, who was to bear him a further 13, of whom ten died in infancy. In 1720, his first wife Maria Barbara died suddenly, leaving Bach with four young children, including Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel. In Cöthen, Bach completed many instrumental works, including the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier, and the Brandenburg Concertos. Duke Wilhelm was not pleased and threw Bach in jail for a month before discharging him. He then worked for the Duke Wilhelm of Weimar for almost ten years, but as he didn’t get the promotion that he wanted he eventually applied for the post of Kapellmeister to the musically talented Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen. 18 years old, he was appointed organist in Arnstadt, where the church authorities were confused by his "curious embellishments" of the chorales their irritation increased when he prolonged by several months the leave granted him to visit Lübeck and attend Buxtehude´s concerts. Sign up for a Gold membership to read the practice tips.Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) lost both his parents at a young age and was sent to live with his brother Johann Christoph, where he received his first musical instruction. If you consider the first sixteenth-note (semiquaver) in m. Play it as C-B-C.īach uses sequences very often. The B with the trill can be realized as C-B-C-B (therefore, start from the upper note). When you are ready for the ornaments, make them consistent: the first ornament that appears in this invention is called a trill (m. Learn the whole invention without the ornaments first. The lifting will help the music breathe and add clarity to the invention. In other words, try to leave some "air" in between the G and the C and do the same throughout the invention. Lift your hand slightly between the subject and the countersubject. The subject in this invention has 8 notes (C-D-E-F-D-E-C-G) while the countersubject has 4 notes (C-B-C-D). Double check that your fingers are always relaxed before and after playing each note. You may want to practice each voice (or each hand) non-legato first. Try to memorize each hand first, in order to develop independence and touch control. Practice the inventions hands separately. Practice & Performance Tips:As you learn each invention, try to locate all the subjects, which might appear transposed. The most common version of this invention is the one with semiquavers throughout, but as can be seen in the autograph manuscript, Bach later presented a second version with added triplets, perhaps as an example of melodic ornamentation. Subtle crescendos and diminuendos can be used to bring out the melodic contour.īackgroundThe Inventions were originally written as "Praeambula" and "Fantasiae" in the Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Johann Sebastian's eldest son, and later rewritten as musical exercises, designed to help students obtain a singing style of playing, but also to give them "a strong foretaste of composition". A steady tempo and a clear sense of direction towards the first and third beats of each bar will give the piece a strong forward motion. The concise, upward moving subject sounds happy and confident. Virtually every note of the whole piece is derived from the first twelve notes, by means of transposition, inversion (turning the subject upside down) or augmentation (lengthening the note values). Sign up to listen & download > A study in conversationThe compositional economy of this piece is astounding.
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