Invention No. 14 in B-flat major BWV 785

About this work

Invention No. 14 in B-flat major, BWV 785, opens with a short right-hand rest followed by four demisemiquavers followed by a semiquaver. The bass takes up this short figure in bar 4. The more widely spaced notes around these figures make the entries of the two voices easy to hear.
Play the first four bars slowly, finding the demisemiquaver groups and following their arrival in the bass. You want to recognise the answers without breaking the phrase into separate cells. The hand playing longer notes must keep its line alive even when it has fewer notes to play.
Later, the semiquavers stretch into longer runs and move between the hands. Choose a slow four-beat pulse and let each written rest interrupt only the voice it belongs to. Then sing the bass while playing a short passage: its role goes beyond supplying harmony.

What the document contains

The 3-page PDF contains the complete keyboard Invention BWV 785, typeset by Allen Garvin from the Bach-Gesellschaft edition and distributed by Mutopia. The engraving is declared public domain. A MIDI file accompanies the score.


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