May 6: The Inventions and Sinfonias (Gustav Leonhardt, harpsichord)
I'm a harpsichord guy now?
Welcome, kottke.org readers! This newsletter collects my reflections on listening to the complete known works of J.S. Bach (1685-1750). (More on the project’s origin here.) I’m pacing to get through all of it by New Year’s Eve, so we’re about a third of the way through. Readers’ favorite posts so far include:
The Goldberg Variations (Vikingur Olafsson)
The Cello Suites (Msistislav Rostropovich)
On good fortune and overwhelming emotion (Peter Schreier and Karl Richter)
The two-part inventions and three-part sinfonias are thirty short keyboard pieces that Bach wrote for students (and for his musician children). These days, the inventions are marketed as exercises for the advanced beginner, and the sinfonias for the intermediate.
Did they have more time and focus back then, or do I just suck?
A few years ago, I started playing piano again after a 30+ year hiatus. I’d never gotten very far along the first time; my childhood teacher bred Yorkshire terriers in her home and wrote the name of every note into the sheet music. Neither were conducive to my barely emerging pianism.
My return to the instrument in middle age has been extremely slow going, and generally much more of a struggle for me than guitar.
I cannot get the inventions under my fingers with good time and pace. I honk sharps and flats, thud the tremolos, lose the through lines.
My brain and fingers are surely less plastic than they once were. But come on, I still have good brains, I was just featured on kottke.org! It’s frustrating, especially when I stream a reference recording for whatever I’m trying to play at the piano, and these wizards just rip.
Yes, it’s ludicrous to compare myself as an advanced beginner to the greatest musicians of the past century, but I’ve learned that this is my personality.
At root, it may be that I just need to spend thousands more hours at the keyboard. I need a second lifetime. You?
Having hacked my way through playing these pieces at a glacial pace, I sort of know how I want them to sound: genial, bright, and alive. When I searched for a recording to feature on this post, I kept finding myself grumpy at the pianists I sampled: too mannered, overemotive, too stiff, weird dynamics, wrong tempos.
I made my way to Gustav Leonhardt, the massively influential Dutch harpsichordist (as far as that goes).
Gustav plays the inventions and sinfonias with the pace, sensitivity, and clarity that I want. Strange how I liked best a harpsichord recording, since the instrument has a more limited expressive range than the piano, and an anachronistic timbre. Gustav is careful but not fussy, and he makes every phrase sing. Before “Year of Bach”, there is no way I would have preferred harpsichord to piano. The deep listening is paying off.
This collection was recorded in 1975, and covers BWV 772-801. Listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Music.
Some highlights from this set of famous studies:
We kick off in C Major (BWV 772); Bach is so good at delaying where you think the concluding bits of phrases will be. If this were my composition, I would have wound up the phrase with a little major cadence right after 0:16. Bach, a marginally better composer, gives us another little bit of joy first.
The next invention is in C Minor; I’m stepping a bit beyond my expertise, but this excerpt sounds like it’s played mostly in harmonic inversion. (Think of Louis Armstrong singing complementing harmony under Ella Fitzgerald.)
More inversion in the D Minor Invention #4; this scalar melody breathes in and out and is traded from hand to hand:
My favorite of this collection is the F Major Invention #8, which is unabashedly happy. This key has only one flat, so I can try to play it. Leonhardt nails this piece in about a minute; these days, it takes me six.
You know when you recover from misstepping down the stairs? The G Minor Invention #11 has an internal descending line (C# → C → B → Bb → A) of the same vibe:
The theme of the A Minor Invention #13 is rightly famous:
The Sinfonias have more going on, but I generally prefer the leaner Inventions.
Bach puts this little rhythmic theme in B minor through the wringer (Sinfonia BWV 801):
There’s plenty to chew on at the end of the A Minor Sinfonia: misdirection and trills and a suspended harmony into the last resolved note:
Leonhardt is so musical, articulating all of the individual lines and carrying us forward in the music. He makes the harpsichord a pleasure to listen to, who knew?
Andras Schiff is always worth listening to when he plays Bach, and I’ve grown to like piano Bach better than harpsichord Bach. Nice to imagine what Bach would have made of a modern piano. Invention 6 is really very beautiful played very slowly, more like an air than an invention. Also worth trying number 1 with triplets substituted for each instance where there’s a third interval in the sixteenth note pattern - really fun to play. Are you playing from a version that has fingerings? If not, they are worth seeking out. Even if you disagree with the fingering choices, it gets you to wrestle with them more, usually to your advantage.
I spent a year (on and off) memorizing and learning the inventions, both for my fingers and my brain. They're not easy!
Wow, that C minor performance is really slow; I like it to burble along a lot more. What you're hearing is that it's mostly a canon, the left hand imitating the right hand exactly with a delay of 2 measures; then the hands reverse lead and follower roles after the piece has modulated. Perfectly constructed.
My favorite of the inventions is the E major, which to me is an achingly romantic pas de deux between the two hands. (Yes, very slowly!) Number two is probably G minor, with such dextrous chromaticism. But they're all masterpieces, and I wish that the student repertoire included more than the four or so you always hear (C major, D minor, F major, A minor).
When I went around looking for performances that matched the way I thought of these pieces, I really liked Dina Ugorskaja's recording.