When teaching the inventions and sinfonias, do you teach them based on that progressive order of difficulty, or in order by number?
Usually I give a CD of all the inventions/sinfonias to the students with a strong recommendation that they learn all. If they decide to learn them all, then yes, I will teach them according to order of difficulty (I actually use Bach’s original order – see below for more details) and I always start with number one because the analysis is so clearcut – it lays the ground for the more challenging (in terms of analysis) ones.
However this is rarely the case: most students are not interested in learning them all. They usually take a fancy to a couple of them and then we just learn whatever invention/sinfonia they would like to learn. The popular ones – in my experience - are:
Two-part Inventions
no. 1 in C
no. 4 in D minor
no. 8 in F
no. 13 in A minor
no. 14 in Bb
(everyone’s favourites)
no. 5 in Eb
no. 10 in G
no. 11 in G minor
no. 12 in A
no. 13 in A minor
no. 14 in Bb
no. 15 in B minor
Sinfonias
no. 1 in C
no. 2 in C minor
no. 3 in D
no. 6 in E
no. 8 in F
no. 10 in G
no. 12 in A
no. 14 in Bb
no. 15 in B minor
Finally, there are students who do not want to learn any of them. If I insist and find that they may stomach at least one invention, then again I will teach no. 1 since it is such a model invention.
I am also very interested in how Bach himself would have taught them. First he did not write them as “technical” exercises, but primarily as “compositional” exercises. His main teaching thrust was to form master musicians like himself (as opposed to instrumentalists – who knew how to play but had little idea of theory). To use the inventions/sinfonias merely as exercises in hand-independence or as a warm-up is to limit oneself unnecessarily and to completely ignore Bach’s original intent. It is like having a Ferrari in your garage, but - through sheer ignorance of its possibilities – to harness a couple of horses to it and to use it as a cart.
So in which order did Bach actually taught them? One interesting clue lies in the realisation that they were first written in W. F. Bach little notebook - an instruction manual for his son. In that book they appear in a very different order from the order they were eventually published. Since WF notebook is in progressive order throughout, we may assume that the inventions and sinfonias have been written there in the order that Bach taught them, from easy to difficult – but remember, this will relate to compositional/analysis difficulty rather than technical difficulty. Also part of the difficulty may have to do with problems we do not experience at all today. In Bach’s day, most likely such pieces would have been played in the clavichord (his favourite instrument and the most common household keyboard) or the harpsichord. Both instruments (in particular the clavichord) need constant retuning. Nowadays you just call the piano tuner or play a digital that is never out of tune. But in Bach’s day, it was part of the musician’s craft to tune the instrument (sometimes this was needed in between movements of a piece). So the order of difficulty may reflect also the added difficulty of tuning the instrument.
So here is Bach’s order (from easy to difficult) as it appears in WF book:
1. C major
2. D minor
3. E minor
(These three inventions have a “scale” motif)
4. F major
5. G major
6. A minor
(These three inventions have as motif the arpeggiated tonic triad)
7. B minor
8. Bb major
9. A major
(These three inventions have fairly long motifs and a countermotif is now introduced)
10. G minor
11. F minor
12. E major
13. Eb major
14. D major
15. C minor
(These 6 inventions are the more complex of the set)
Now, here are some interesting observations:
1. The first seven inventions here (C – d – e – F – G – a – b) follow the order of the triads in the C major scale.
2. As a consequence, their keys have either no sharps or flats, or one sharp or one flat. The next 8 inventions – following the principle of symmetry of which Bach was so fond – simply go back to C in descending order: Bb – A – g – f – E – Eb, D – c. But this also means that they increase in flats and sharps step by step. In this way, by following this order, students are introduced to the simpler keys to increasingly more complex keys (in terms of number of flats and sharps).
3. Structurally (as far as composition techniques and motif analysis are concerned) the first 3 inventions are the simplest, the last 3 the most complex.
4. This same sequence is used in the sinfonias, and in the 11 preludes in the WF Bach notebook. Incidentally, these 11 preludes eventually found their way into the WTC – but in chromatic order, not in the order they appear in the notebook.
Eventually Bach rewrote the inventions and sinfonias separately and reordered them chromatically, and the reason was very likely to be for easy of reference – it makes finding a specific invention/sinfonia in the book easier.
Best wishes,
Bernhard.
Topic: Can someone (many people) rank the difficulty of all these works? (Read 45969 times)