Bach's Invention 10 in G (Pastorale)

[00:00:01][music] [music] Hello and welcome back to the Independent Pianist. It is your host Cole Anderson and today I'm actually recording this video on the very day that I'm uploading it, which almost never happens. Usually I have to record stuff and then put everything together and it takes me a few days. But today I have a little bit of a lighter practice day uh because I'm playing a concert later this evening. I always take it a little a little easier earlier in the day so I actually have all this open time that I can sit down and record something. So today we're covering box invention number 10 in G major. I'm getting very close to the end of all the inventions. I think we only have two more after this. C minor and C major number one and two. So it's been super fun for me to go through all these inventions. Of course I played uh several of them when I was a kid and it's fun to go through really entire and look at Bach's compositional approach to these these little pieces. uh we really get to see Bach's counterpoint, his contrauntal approach, I suppose, in kind of its quintessence in pieces like this.

[00:01:24]There's not very much to work with. Of course, he only has the two voices, so he has to really make the most of all of his compositional magic to make these pieces work. So, now that I've covered quite a few of them, it's interesting what is consistent among all of these inventions and also what is original from one to the next. So for example, I have noticed that in these inventions, there's almost always a kind of tonic to dominant kind of harmonic pattern going on in the first half of the piece. So usually this is also expressed through some kind of pretty clear cadence halfway through the piece. And that's probably true for 23 of these inventions. So what that means is that if you really tried, you could turn these pieces into binary form pieces. If you went to this cadence point halfway through the piece and then you repeated the first half and then you repeated the second half, you'd get a little binary form piece uh like what Bach used for his very sweet uh dance movements or something like the Scarlotti sonatas where each half is repeated and it's a very clear form uh this kind of proto sonata form uh binary form movement. So it's interesting that that kind of compositional approach was just so prevalent that it found its way into so many other forms including these inventions and we'll see how that continues as I go through the symphonas and also the fugues in the waltebr and we're we'll see how that continues. In other respects though these inventions are very are highly varied. So many of the inventions are kind of strictly composed from a thematic standpoint in a similar fashion to a fugue where there's a very set theme and there's a very set kind of counter theme for that theme in the other voice and they're approached in this kind of very structured way and we hear these the theme come back in a in a very methodical kind of manner. Uh, but some of the other ones, as you might have already noticed, if you're following the series, are a little bit more fantasylike and and the themes are a little more open-ended. He doesn't always repeat things exactly. Uh, sometimes there's a new theme that occurs somewhere uh midway some midway point through the piece. It's kind of interesting how varied he can be in this approach. Um, and in a certain sense, the two voice structure of the inventions gives him some leeway to do that. I mean, there's only so many ways you can be super super structured with when you have only two voices. When you have three or four voices and a normal fugue, it gives you a little bit more of a of a scaffolding to kind of hang very consistent subjects on. But I think that if you wanted to be be really imaginative and really expressive, sometimes he felt the need to kind of just expand the thematic material a little bit. So that's the situation that we have with this invention. So let's dive right in and go through bar by bar.

[00:04:13]So the main theme of this invention is a bit in the style of a pastoral. It might remind you a little bit of the uh prelude from the Waltber cleavier the E major prelude from the first book.

[00:04:32]That one it's a little bit in a similar style to something like that and many other pastoral movements that uh occur throughout box works. So our main theme is a very short one.

[00:04:44]>> [music] >> just that very open. It's all entirely using uh notes from the G major triad.

[00:04:55]Now, I've marked these uh parts of the succeeding uh musical material as motives because I think that helps to understand what Bach is doing here instead of really talking about themes so much. Uh the material in this invention is so slight and so highly variable that I kind of have perceived some little motives here. So I've called this first bar motive A, which is basically the theme.

[00:05:24]And then this little thing right after with the trill I've called motive B. So we can see there's a pretty standard uh opening in box style. We have the motive also in the left hand. [music] Those two motives in the left hand as well. And the right hand just continues as a counter subject kind of these little arpeggios.

[00:05:51]And then immediately after that, after having had these two motives in both hands, we get kind of a free uh episode which is just based on these sort of free arpeggio motives. There's not not much beyond that going on here.

[00:06:10]>> [music] >> So, so far so good. We've had a little a little motive and a little episode continuation. And so after this is where it starts to get interesting. We get what I would really term new motives. It almost feels like we're getting into a secondary theme. Although I know this is a very short first half of music. So it's not really a second theme, but I it they sound like new motives. So the most important one is probably in the left hand. We get what I've called motive D.

[00:06:42][music] So it's a dotted quarter note tied to an eighth note. And there's also very importantly there's a mortant at the beginning. [music] And the mortant creates a little bit of a rhythmical impulse at the beginning of this motive.

[00:06:56]>> [music] >> And counter pointing that there is this motive in the right hand which I called motive C. And at first glance it looks kind of like a variant of the opening motive which is really what it is.

[00:07:12][music] We do have the same arpeggio thing.

[00:07:18][music] It's just been replaced with a scale at the beginning. But also importantly there is this mortant >> [music] >> Uh so I think that's important again because it gives it a rhythmical kind of uh impetus. I think the mortant is there as kind of a rhythmical element.

[00:07:38][music] So if you really wanted to, you could also add a mortant in the next bar in measure 8.

[00:07:45]Would make sense. And we can see that these ideas are kind of being traded um back and forth.

[00:07:52][music] So already this is a little bit atypical. We really haven't had a repetition literally of the opening theme. Again, there's kind of this variation on the opening theme where we have this mortant and and scale replacing uh what happened in the opening theme, which was more of an arpeggio. And these two new ideas continue for a little bit longer. And then we get our cadence point. So we're already about halfway through this very short invention.

[00:08:29]So this is the point where it would be possible to loop back around. If Bach had decided to do that, he could have written this as a binary form piece in which each half repeated. Uh, so if he had done something like that, it might have sounded like [music] [music] and there you are. You'd be back to the beginning. Uh, of course, Bach decides not to do that. Uh, this little thing right here in measure 13, that's kind of interesting. It originally derives from what I called motive D.

[00:09:14][music] You see this little pattern with a rising step and a falling third. That's where that comes from. [music] And this time it's followed also by this fourth jump and a little cadence. So that's also important. That's going to come back at the very end of the piece.

[00:09:34]So there's a little bit of a rhyming kind of structure where the end of the piece echoes the end of the first half.

[00:09:40]So now we get kind of a little bit of a developmental section. We've reached the dominant. We're in D major. So the second half of the piece is going to be us kind of journeying back to uh G major.

[00:09:55][music] So you probably already noticed this is the original theme.

[00:10:08][music] So again, this really does feel a bit like a binary form piece. In a in most binary form pieces, the second half would usually begin with some kind of echo of the opening theme. So this structure already seems much more like a binary form kind of structure than something like a fugue for example where you have the same theme kind of continuing throughout the entire piece.

[00:10:31]And then right where I stopped playing we get a new variant of that same rhythmic idea that was motive D. So starting with the dotted quarter, [music] it comes in very prominently in the bass uh accompanied by some kind of free material which is reminiscent of the opening theme.

[00:10:57][music] And then right here we get one of these kind of fantasy- like passages that Bach liked so much and which he's used already several times in these inventions where he has a trill accompanying some free material in the other voice.

[00:11:15][music] >> [music] >> So we can kind of feel this is bringing us back towards G major. By the end we have a little bit of a feeling of the dominant chord in the key of G major. So we're already coming back.

[00:11:42]It's a very short, very lovely uh invention. Now this material right where the trills begin in the left hand.

[00:11:51][music] This is nice because it's uh a little bit of a half inversion of the previous stuff that we had in the right hand. Measures 18 and 19.

[00:12:02][music] That's sequentially leading us down by step each time.

[00:12:10]And then [music] the second and third beats are the same, but the first beat has been inverted.

[00:12:26]>> [music] >> that allows the motive to be sequentially treated upwards. So it gives us this feeling like we're rising up each time.

[00:12:42]Again, this is not really the opening theme. Maybe it's a little bit like a backwards version of motive C because you remember at measure seven we had [music] we had a scale and then the arpeggio twice in a row. This time we have kind of arpeggio and then a scale at the end.

[00:13:07]So maybe it's a backward version of that motive that we had before. It's all very malleable, very freely treated in this kind of fantasylike way. So then after all of this stuff, we end that whole trill section.

[00:13:26]And this is the part that's really fascinating to me. Uh if you remember, we go back to the very beginning, that opening theme had two components, right?

[00:13:34]It had it had the main component which was the arpeggios and then it had this little tag at the end which is a quarter and an eighth kind of like a like a jig rhythm or something like that. [music] But we never heard that again. I don't know if you've realized that but ever since um measure three we we've never had that.

[00:14:03]We've never had that motive come back again. The closest we've had is that we have had some little ornaments. We've had some little mortants which are a little bit maybe reminiscent of [music] those trills that we had, but we never had that rhythm come back in any kind of way. And then right here at the end, Bach chooses to bring it back not once but three times right in a row.

[00:14:27][music] We get the motive three times in a row.

[00:14:33]suddenly in the right hand and it's such a humorous and kind of joyous little flourish.

[00:14:41]It's almost like box says, "Oh, I forgot about that one." So, here it is coming back. And then after that, we get uh just the main theme again a couple of times combined uh in kind of an interesting way so that both voices have a variant of it.

[00:15:01]And now that little tag that we had at the end of the first half, so-called first half, remember what we had there at measure 13, it comes back again in the home key.

[00:15:22]And just for good measure, Bach puts two more little references [music] to that motive B that we had in the very beginning of the piece. And that brings the whole piece around to a conclusion.

[00:15:34]So, it's a really lovely and uh well put together little piece of music. So, there you have it. It is really a lovely little piece. Very freely put together as you saw, and it goes by, of course, very quickly, but it's one of those pieces that um leaves a little bit of a mark after you've heard it. I think I think it's one of those ones kind of like number 14, the B flat major one that uh I find myself just wanting to play again after even though I'm not uh I finished the recording and everything, I find myself just sitting down and kind of playing it from time to time just because it's so lovely and kind of has a such an untroubled feeling feeling to it. So there we go. Uh that's it. Um thanks very much for watching the video.

[00:16:15]Stay tuned. The complete performance is coming up in just a moment. Uh thank you of course to everyone who's who supports the channel on patreon.com. Um that's very very helpful. Of course uh if you can't make financial contributions that support the channel, of course you can support the channel just by liking the video and subscribing. That's also very helpful. And also leave a comment in the uh below because the comments help with engagement. So they help me to get more views. So um if you have any thoughts that you'd like to share, feel free to do so.

[00:16:45]Uh we've got some good repertoire coming up in the near future as well. I'm working on uh Beethoven and Volstein right now. Someudes by Proomanov and Capon as well as um Bach's Prelude Fugal Algro. That'll be my next Bach piece probably coming up fairly shortly.

[00:17:03]Uh feel free to let me know if there are pieces that you'd like me to analyze. I try to get to requests although I'm probably about a year behind at this point. But it's always fun. Uh if you have have requests, I' I'd be very happy to hear what those might be. I think that's it though. So until next time, please take care, keep practicing, and stay safe out there.

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