Bach: Invention in E Major

It is so easy to fall into the trap of assuming that the music of JS Bach was wonderful in its day but somehow is no longer fully relevant to the modern world. Even at the end of his life many people began to think of his music has antiquated. Some were considering the music of his sons to be an improvement on the music of the old man.

That did not last long.

Shortly after his death there was a renewed interest in his music that could rightfully be called the ifs fascination, and that fascination has continued non-stop through to today. Everyone who knows anything about music he is in awe of this man. I think we can accurately say that Bach is to music what Shakespeare is to the English language.

And that may be an understatement.

In fact, because of the nature of music and how we experience it, great music is universal in a way that literature never can be because there is no language barrier for music. That makes listening to the music of JS Bach a potentially miraculous experience for anyone on the planet.

However, it is my belief that an essential part of Bach’s music is mostly ignored, and that is the improvisational nature of his creations. We have known for a long time that the composers of the Baroque and Classical eras participated in musical competitions in which they showed off their talents for making up music on the spot. Some of those competitions are important because it showed who was considered the best at improvisation. This includes, among others: Scarlatti, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.

Today when most people play the music of Bach, they follow the notes in his scores exactly the way they got handed down officially, with absolutely no changes whatsoever in the music. This would seem to contradict totally the inventiveness and creativity of Bach, who was known to change things endlessly in the moment by making improvisations.

The E major invention, as is the case for so many other compositions by Bach, is divided into section A and section B. Both sections are generally repeated with no changes. For me as a listener and as a player that is extremely boring and unimaginative. I don’t believe that this is how Bach played his own compositions. For that reason I played both sections exactly as written the first time but varied them considerably the second time in ways that I feel are appropriate and typical of what he actually did in countless other compositions.

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