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An invention in this context is a short two- piece of music, usually instrumental, which shows off the composer's inventiveness in writing polyphonic (multiple independent voice) music. Bach's inventions are probably the most often played pieces in this genre. His two-part inventions were composed in Cohen around 1720. They were intended not only as pieces for teaching "clean" playing of two (or three) part polyphony, but also as models of composition. Bach created a total of 15, 2 - part inventions.
Of these 15, I had the opportunity of listening to number 6 in E Major. The song is played on what I presume to be either a harpsichord or a guitar. At first impression, the song seems just go up and down the scales. Starting off slow and eventually speeding up and then ultimately coming to a screeching halt similar to the life of an elevator. I found the melody could be broken down into 3 sections: Measures 1 - 20, 21 - 42, and 43 - 62. I say this because each section seems to have its own story to tell.
Measures 1 - 20 and 43 - 62 seem to act as an intro and outro, with 21 - 42 playing the body of the song and possessing the ability to be broken down further. Measures 9 through 13 of the first section are interesting to look at because of its interesting pattern. Looking at measures 9, 11, and 13 you can see a consecutive dip in chord progression. In other words, the chord in 9 is the same as 11, but 1 degree lower. The same rule applies to 11 to 13 and the same relationship is found between measures 10 and 12.
The end of the first part of the story also ends our time in E Major indefinitely. Section 2 begins in B Major. Although in this new key, the new section does not reveal itself until measure 25. The first few measures of section 2, resemble section 1.
I assume Bach does this so as not to make his work look blocky. Section 2 is unique among all other parts of the song because it goes to 3 different keys. Starting off in the key of B major, by the end of measure 32 we are in G# major, and by the end of measure 42 we return to E major. Section 3 returns us to the key of E major. It resembles section 1 greatly with the exception that Bach uses an assortment of lower notes than used in the first section.
Where section 1 was high pitched, section 3 is low pitched. The only other thing of noting for this section would be measures 51 - 55 which resemble the same chord progression as measures 9 - 13. However in a sort of mirror effect, 50 - 54 sounds like the lowest part of this section, contrasting with measures 9 - 13 being the highest part of its section. Overall, this piece is very repetitive. It is almost like a riff except that the notes are never the same.
The notes tend to change by only one degree. After listening to it many, many times, I was able to notice little subtleties that I was not have been able to do so at first. When trying to understand the significance of measures 9 - 12, it seemed to me that those measures seem to make up a sort of short climax for that first part of Bach's work. Although the piece begins at a high E, the piece never sustains high- pitched tunes until 9 - 12. After those measures are played, it goes back down. It is comparable to a well written horror movie, having a few scares during the movie and then that one big climax and then finally having some resolution.
The song seems to have everything related. At first, the middle section seemed way out of place. The first and third sections resemble each other well, but the second part of the piece works to sort of mend the beginning and ending parts together without making the whole composition entirely boring with complete and udder repetition. Interestingly in my opinion, the second part of the piece is almost like a bigger version of verses 9 - 12 and 51 - 54. It does for the entire song what those measures did to its respective parts.
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