DonRocks Posted December 17, 2016 Share Posted December 17, 2016 Johann Sebastian Bach wrote two series of "study pieces" for his students to prepare for his full-blown fugues. These can be thought of as "semi-fugues," or "preparatory studies" if you will, but they are by no means simple, elementary works; quite the contrary, they are extremely complex, and the Sinfonia (three-part inventions) are just one step away from being fugues. Bach wrote fifteen two-part inventions (cataloged as BWV 772-786) which are definitely the easier of the two sets - they have two voices, but are fully contrapuntal (with a theme, answered in a "call and response" fashion with the other hand). The fifteen "Sinfonia" (also called three-part inventions, and cataloged as BWV 787-801) are a level up in difficulty, and some of them are more difficult than some of Bach's Fugues. I'm currently studying BWV 800, a three-part invention in B-flat major, and it is quite difficult. I have chosen - as many pianists do - to take all the untied eighth notes in the piece, and release them just before the end of the full eighth-of-a-beat, giving a small "breath" of silence after each one. The problem with this is *seeing* where these eighth notes are in this three-voiced piece - it's very difficult to memorize, and since you only have one brain and can't possibly think of three things simultaneously, you have to get these things in your "brain-to-muscle" memory. This afternoon, I spent some time extracting all the eighth notes from the piece, and have written them down separately, as their own piece of "music" (if you can call it that). It will help any aspiring student who wishes to allow these eighth notes to breathe, by giving the student a better idea of where they occur in the piece. For each note, I've included the correct fingerings which should be used when playing the *entire* piece. If you study the score, you'll see that the main theme ends with 1) eighth note 2) eighth note 3) two sixteenth notes 4) eighth note, just before resolving exactly one octave below where the statement began. I have highlighted all of these patterns with bold, underlined text - they signify the end of a statement has arrived. The slashes ("/") indicate "not an eighth note" - they could be an eighth rest, or two sixteenth notes, for example. In *all* cases where my notation is bold and underlined, the slashes are two sixteenth notes, as those are all occurrences of the main theme, and the main theme contains two sixteenth notes at that point. This is admittedly a very unconventional technique; nevertheless, I believe students will find it very useful in sorting out the eighth notes in this piece. This extraction consists of "eighth notes, and only eighth notes" - I hope somewhere, some student will stumble upon this, and that it helps them learn this fine piece of music. At first glance, it may appear unreadable, but it's actually pure mathematics, and very logical. Each section represents one line of the piece, with two measures in each line (it's a thirteen-line piece, with each line containing two measures). In each section, there are seven lines: * The top two lines are the upper voice and its fingerings * The middle three lines are the middle voice and its fingerings (notice that this can be either in the right hand (notated above the notes) or the left hand (notated below the notes)) * The bottom two lines are the lower voice and its fingerings * A dash ("-") simply indicates the beginning of a beat - each measure has four beats. 1 4 4 2 4 4 -- always right hand - - F G - / F - - Bb D - / C UPPER -- right hand - C / - - MIDDLE 2 -- left hand Bb D - C Bb - A G - F Eb - - - LOWER 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 -- always left hand -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 3 5 1 2 5 - Eb - - C F - G Bb - F / - 1 2 1 2 - G Bb - Eb G - - - A / - 1 C / - - F G - / F 2 3 1 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 3 - A / - - C / - F / - 3 Bb Eb - / D - G C - / Bb Eb / - - D G - 4 1 1 4 1 1 5 5 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 5 1 5 5 - / C - D / - - - D F - / D - - 2 3 3 2 1 F# G - / F - - / Ab - / F - Eb C - - 4 5 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 4 G B - - - - - - 1 1 1 3 2 - - B D - - F A - - E - - - G G C / - - F A - / G 1 5 5 3 1 1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 2 5 5 - - - F / - - E G - / E 2 2 1 1 - F A - - - - - E G - - - C C - D / - - 1 5 4 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5 - - - - - D - 1 / E - A / - - - - - 1 - - - Bb A - A A - - D 2 1 1 1 1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 4 4 3 4 B D - / B - - - Bb A - - 1 2 2 - - - F A - / F - D - 1 - B G - - - - - 3 5 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5 3 4 4 5 5 4 - Bb F - G / - C F - / D - G / - 1 2 1 1 3 2 1 - / D - Eb / - / F - G Bb - / G - C F 1 2 - - - - - - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 5 / 5 A D - / Bb - Eb / - - - - 1 1 1 1 1 - Bb D - / C - - - F A - / F 1 F Bb - - - - - - 3 5 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 5 3 Bb D - - - C - - - 1 1 - C - D - - - - G - - Bb D - / C D D - Bb D - Eb Eb - C / 4 5 3 1 5 1 3 1 5 1 4 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5 - - - Bb - - - 2 1 - - - D C - - - / Eb - D Bb - G Eb - F F - - - 1 1 3 1 3 1 5 Here's the piece played in full by Glenn Gould (with my apologies for the inexplicably strange picture, but this is (in my opinion) the better of Gould's two recordings, and it's the only one I can find on YouTube). My advice to any aspiring student is *not* to let the extreme speed discourage you - nobody else plays it like this, and Gould is Gould - not much more to say except that God himself couldn't play it any better: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Slater Posted December 18, 2016 Share Posted December 18, 2016 Rocks, as you know I am no fan of Gould. I love this Sinfonia, but I play it much slower. It has, to me, a kind of sad quality to it. The Sinfonias, overall are my favorite Bach keyboard pieces. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DonRocks Posted December 18, 2016 Author Share Posted December 18, 2016 1 hour ago, Mark Slater said: Rocks, as you know I am no fan of Gould. I love this Sinfonia, but I play it much slower. It has, to me, a kind of sad quality to it. The Sinfonias, overall are my favorite Bach keyboard pieces. One nice thing about Bach, perhaps more than any composer, is that tempo just isn't that important - as long as things are in balance, everything is okay. You might not like Gould's tempo, but it's in balance, he brings out all the statements very clearly, and he absolutely has something to say. I'm very curious how you handle the left-hand trill at the end of measure two. That's going to be my sticking point if I try and play three-against-one. If I start on the F and play two-against-one, I think I can do it - since it's an ornament, I guess it doesn't much matter, and if you play it slowly, you can do whatever you think is best. Nevertheless, I hear a joyous, singing quality in this piece, and I think it should be played with a lilt in the tempo - maybe not as fast as Gould plays it, but with a lilt nonetheless - Bb-major is a happy key, and I just don't hear any sadness in this piece - I'm curious where you get that from: It modulates, but at no point does it switch to minor. In fact, the reason I picked it is because I've been working on a disproportionate number of sad-sounding pieces (Beethoven C-Minor Sonata Op 10 No 1 first movement, Chopin E-minor Nocturne Op 72 No 1, Bach Sinfonia #2 in C-minor BWV 788), and I wanted something to lift my spirits - my teacher told me to pick any other Sinfonium I wanted, and this is the one I chose. BTW, here is Gould playing the second Sinfonia BWV 788. I'm also curious to know how you finger the two extended right-hand trills in this piece. What on earth don't you like about Gould's rendition of this? Also, do you end this on a minor or major chord? Gould chose minor; my edition says major - I actually prefer the minor, as I think the major is a bit of a jolt, coming out of nowhere. No comment on my extraction of the eighth notes? I thought it was, at the least, a novel attack towards learning a portion of the piece. I try not to think about the Sinfonia in a linear fashion - I approach them from all sorts of angles (of course, I've now worked on precisely two of them in my entire life). Regardless of our divergence on Gould, I could play nothing but Bach for the rest of my life, and be perfectly content. Then again, I could say the same thing about Beethoven, or, for that matter, Chopin - although with Chopin, I think I'd begin to miss polyphonic music (late Beethoven at least has some fugues, angry bears though they may be). Final question (for now) - I believe sinfonia is Latin, and the singular would be sinfonium. If that's true (is it?) why do they call individual pieces "sinfonia?" Or, is it not true? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
porcupine Posted December 18, 2016 Share Posted December 18, 2016 18 hours ago, DonRocks said: (with my apologies for the inexplicably strange picture, The picture is from the movie Lars and the Real Girl. from Rotten Tomatoes: Critics Consensus: Lars and the Real Girl could've so easily been a one-joke movie. But the talented cast, a great script, and direction never condescends to its character or the audience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Slater Posted December 19, 2016 Share Posted December 19, 2016 Rocks, for my audition at the Hochschule für Musik in Wien, I played the first Sinfonia in C major and the 9th in f minor on an extremely out of tune Sperrhake harpsichord in front of, among others, Hans Swarovsky, Anton Heiller and Isolde Ahlgrimm. Needless to say, I was terrified, but, I got accepted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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