Bach and Newton: Artistic Parallels (About the Creative Content of the Urtext of the Inventions and Sinfonias)
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Abstract
The article elaborates on how J. S. Bach, parallel to Newton, “researched” the laws of nature and the Universe. In
his sound process he modeled space, time and motion and manifested in artistic form discoveries in many ways
analogous to the scientific inventions of his contemporary. Bach, similarly to Newton, showed himself as a “scholarpioneer,”
who constructed in the logic of his constructions an artistic picture of the world, nature and the Universe.
He rendered in the music of the “Inventions and Sinfonias” images of mechanical motion, which were studied at that
same time in physics: ascending and descending, “running,” spherical, laminar, obtrusive, incremental, sinusoidal,
etc. He even imprinted the wave-like nature of oscillating motions in the acoustical image of the work of a pendulum
(the Two-Part Invention in F major, the Three-Part Invention in B minor).
The Inventions are distinguished by their special attribute of penetration into the laws of the physical qualities
of matter: here the numerous models of folding and unfolding of the musical text demonstrate forms of alteration
of time and space, which are bearers of information about the outer world. It is not perchance that the pieces in the
second half of the cycle, namely, the 15 Three-Part Inventions, are called Sinfonias. The subtitle indicates at the
quite concrete characteristic features of the score, which presents a musical equivalent of a volumetric tridimensional
space. They may be realized in a musical score for ensemble on the basis of numerous modifications of vertical and
horizontal oppositions of the acoustic images of solo and continuo. The same characteristic features are contained in
the essentially stereophonic voluminous musical text of the Inventions and Sinfonias, convolved into a two-staff shortscore,
which may be explicated by the performer into various versions of a derived ensemble score.
Keywords: J. S. Bach and Newton, Inventions and Sinfonias, baroque music making, baroque ensemble practice,
creative music making.
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References
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