Inventions and Songs

This program weaves together selections from Bach's two-part inventions with my songs. The idea for this juxtaposition came to me through my own practice-sessions. When I was learning the Bach inventions, I would oftentimes spend a certain amount of time on one invention and then find myself wanting nothing more than to sing and play a song of my own before moving on to another invention. Eventually it struck me that this was actually a rather meaningful musical relationship...Bach's inventions each are quite short, explore one or two ideas each, and in the working out of a musical subject, they have a great deal of power to focus the ear on one or two parameters in a very urgent way. Songs, though very different on their musical surface from Bach, also are generally only a few minutes long each, follow through a textual and musical idea with a pretty high degree of focus, and often cleve to a formal design which acts as a kind of scaffolding to support a high degree of detail and individuality.