Description : The Inventions and Sinfonies even more than the Welltempered clavier indicate clearly that keyboard instruction in Bach’s day was at the same time instruction in composition. '
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The Inventions and Sinfonies, contemporaneous with the first part of the Well-tempered clavier,were originally written into the Little clavier book of his twelve-year-old son Wilhelm Friedemann in 1722,when Bach was Kapellmeister at Cöthen. '
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They were there called Preambles and Fantasies – fifteen each of two-part and three-part pieces in the fifteen then normal major and minor keys. '
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In the Little clavier book they are ordered in such a way that, progressing upwards from C major, those keys come first the triads of which fall within the scale of C major, i. e. C major itself, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor; the remainder, descending from B minor, follow: B minor itself, B-flat major, A major, G minor, F minor, E major, E-flat major, D major, C minor. In the following year, 1723, Bach produced a fair copy of these pieces in the familiar order followed in this edition, improving in the process the part-writing in a number of places, and extending some of the pieces. '
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The two-part pieces are now called Inventions, those in three parts, Sinfonies.
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