Bach and the patterns of invention

Description

In this major new interpretation of the music of J. S. Bach, we gain a striking picture of the composer as a unique critic of his age. By reading Bach's music "against the grain" of contemporaries such as Vivaldi and Telemann, Laurence Dreyfus explains how Bach's approach to musical invention in a variety of genres posed a fundamental challenge to Baroque aesthetics. "Invention" - the word Bach and his contemporaries used for the musical idea that is behind or that generates a composition - emerges as an invaluable key in Dreyfus's analysis. Looking at important pieces in a range of genres, including concertos, sonatas, fugues, and vocal works, he focuses on the fascinating construction of the invention, the core musical subject, and then shows how Bach disposes, elaborates, and decorates it in structuring his composition. Bach and the Patterns of Invention brings us fresh understanding of Bach's working methods, and how they differed from those of the other leading composers of his day. We also learn here about Bach's unusual appropriations of French and Italian styles - and about the elevation of various genres far above their conventional status.

First Sentence

Sometime in 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach, Capellmeister to his Serene Highness the Prince of Anhalt-Cothen, inscribed the title page to a small handwritten volume of keyboard pieces which were to be understood as a Straightforward Instruction, in which amateurs of the keyboard, and especially the eager ones, are shown a clear way not only (1) of learning to play cleanly in two voices, but also, after further progress, (2) of dealing correctly and satisfactorily with three obbligato parts; at the same time not only getting good inventions, but developing the same satisfactorily, and above all arriving at a cantabile manner in playing, all the while acquiring a strong foretaste of composition.

Excerpt

Sometime in 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach, Capellmeister to his Serene Highness the Prince of Anhalt-Cothen, inscribed the title page to a small handwritten volume of keyboard pieces which were to be understood as a Straightforward Instruction, in which amateurs of the keyboard, and especially the eager ones, are shown a clear way not only (1) of learning to play cleanly in two voices, but also, after further progress, (2) of dealing correctly and satisfactorily with three obbligato parts; at the same time not only getting good inventions, but developing the same satisfactorily, and above all arriving at a cantabile manner in playing, all the while acquiring a strong foretaste of composition.

Subjects

Other Editions

• Bach and the patterns of inventionHarvard University Press1996-01-01
• Bach and the Patterns of InventionPaperbackHarvard University Press2004-03-01