The Manuscripts of the Inventions

About the Manuscripts

Someone said: the Internet is the greatest library of the world! Only, it is an unusual library where the books are scattered on the floor so you can really find anything just by chance...

I felt the same way when I researched the net for pictures of the original manuscripts (MSs) of the Inventions... I couldn’t find anything almost!

I thought to myself: this can’t be! The Inventions are the most important teaching material in the history of the piano and we can’t have access to the MSs on the Internet collected?!

But then I thought: well, this is an opportunity! Let’s make this blog a proper place for the manuscripts. I will try to locate, download and upload all the original manuscripts of the Inventions.

I’d greatly appreciate if you could help me in this!

Why is it important to see the Manuscripts of the pieces?

Maybe it’s only me but I always found it very-very intriguing and inspiring to look at the original handwriting of a writer or composer. Simply, just seeing the ”original energy” on paper is revealing! Just think of the heroic battle of Beethoven, Chopin or Liszt on the paper itself... or the magnificent cleanliness of Mozart’s handwriting... (well, of course, if you happened to see them!)

Bach’s handwriting is very neat. It’s always clean – and revealing. Somehow, the motifs come alive much better than on the printed sheets. (Especially the fugues are revealing)

And very importantly – the phrasing of the music becomes more understandable, too.

For example, in Invention Nr. 2, the phrasing in my “Urtext edition” is incorrect: it doesn’t follow Bach’s original intention, in which he clearly wanted to articulate the phrases with the first note being a staccato (quick and non-legato) note! (And for that matter, not even the great Andras Schiff or Glenn Gould are playing the theme and the piece “correctly” if I may say so... just listen to their otherwise beautiful recordings of the Inventions)

But I happened to find the Manuscript of the Invention Nr.1. (well, a fragment of it)

Take a look at the picture I attach (the MS of the Invention Nr.1): look at the beautiful handwriting of Bach and the simplicity of the idea of music! It’s worth contemplating on this picture. Look at the symbols of silence... all very logically and neatly laid out. I think it’s nonsense that Bach just jotted down these notes while teaching at the piano... he must have been sitting alone – and composing the whole thing in his head alone.

So: let’s find the manuscripts together!

It would be a great help if you could help me where to find them! Thanks!  :o)

David