Improve music practice routines playing J.S. Bach’s Invention 2 BWV 773 sounding in the key of C minor in an arrangement for soprano & tenor saxophone duo. The Bach Inventions as duos offer excellent practice & performance opportunities This is a melodic two part invention with ornaments in place that needs to be played with both feeling and sensitivity. The full score appropriately transposed has appended soprano & tenor saxophone parts. The realisation plays back at 52 bpm The pdf sheet music download and play-a-long mp3 accompaniments are available to download from PlentyMusic. Playing the Bach Inventions as part of a duo encourages good intonation, that is, playing in tune, in duet playing. Legato playing is required when performing this invention in what is a slow tempo and melancholy movement. There are some octave transposition in the tenor saxophone needed to keep to the instrument’s range. Bach composed much music as a teacher with the performing and teaching context often relating to his own children. Four of his sons became important composers relevant in music history because they link the baroque era with the classical. The inventions offer excellent opportunities to instrumentalists to improve their ensemble playing skill set and develop an understanding of baroque compositional processes. The inventions are uncompromising in the demands they place on performers requiring accuracy technique and concentrated listening. In the sheet music score the ornaments are indicated but do not sound in the realisation or accompaniments. Those wishing to know how the ornaments are played should refer to the piano video score on the YouTube channel. In this the ornaments have been written out as they should be played. Accompaniments are in place allowing saxophonists to participate in play-a-long ensemble activities as part of music practice routines. The soprano saxophone sounds on one side of the stereo channel and the tenor saxophone on the other. The accompaniment tracks play back at 48, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58 & 60 quarter note (crotchet) beats per minute. There is a two bar count in /click track at the beginning of the accompaniment tracks. Accompaniments are available with and without ornaments in place. Understand that ornaments can be interpreted differently and that performance practice is both an evolving and often reviewed subject. The music editor avoids ornaments ocurring in different voices at the same time. How ornaments are played at cadences in particular is a fascinating subject in the baroque era. Frequently players embrace an element of improvisation in their playing. The best advice is to listen to the performances and learn to discriminate as a performer between good practice and bad practice. The Bach Inventions are generally considered to be intermediate level movements when played on a keyboard instrument. Levels when they are played on different instruments may be different. The principle behind J. S. Bach’s two part inventions is to take a musical idea or motive and then process it following the rules of good contrapuntal writing using the compositional processes of the baroque and at the same time referencing the closely related keys in the key system established in Bach’s own time. Inversion, repetition, sequence, transposition, rhythmic augmentation & diminution and other processes are evident in Bach’s inventions as in most other music of the baroque period. J. S. Bach composed 15 Inventions in a collection dating from 1723 intended to introduce keyboard players to composition techniques of the baroque. They are excellent ensemble movements.
