The Two-Part Inventions - Reverse Thinking in Printmaking
“ClavierBuchlein for Wilhelm Freidemann Bach ” score copied in J.S. Bach’s hand was a formal keyboard method in musical instruction in the art of notating music for his son. Bach intended at this point to etch rather than engrave the whole series but somehow the drafting of the scores were not necessary on an etching plate as his son had long since mastered the rudiments of music. This explains that the printing series in this Clavier-Buchlein for his son included, The Title Page, A Table of Ornamentation and in particular the Musical Clefs on a 16.5 x 29 cm but the series was never completed as an edition.Being an etcher I believe that these three introductory prints were practice plates so Bach could master the necessary mirrored notation for his later scores. The mirrored notation that Bach had practiced etching in various clefs on a plate, initiated a new dimension with the miraculous. As he explored inversion with the symmetrical evolution in its course of expansion in his later scores these reversed symbols in music had to be visual. The sound was shape, the parts were form and the structures took their turn and intertwined in progression in relation to a higher dimension – a sight from all its sides at once and from within as though originating from the center of our being. Bach gave us these properties of vision in his own Autographed Version of the Art of Fugue Scores which was to be presented to the Mizler Society as his third and final “scientific” offering . Bach had at first hand experienced the aesthetic principles in reversed thinking. As testimonies to his artistic, creative genius Bach had found direct correspondence with sight, with sound.
