Interactive piano piece
Learn Invention No. 6 in E major
A bright, dance-like two-voice piece in E major whose lilting 3/8 rhythm feels unlike any other invention. The interactive practice desk displays the compound-meter rhythms clearly beamed, lets you loop the ornament-rich passages at any tempo, and plays each dancing voice separately so you can internalize the lilt before adding the second hand.
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Press Play for the full piece, or choose Opening and switch to Wait for note for guided right-hand practice.
About the piece
E major dancing in triple time.
Invention No. 6 in E major stands apart from its neighbors in the Clavier-Büchlein by its meter: written in 3/8, it moves with a dance-like lilt that none of the other Inventions quite match. E major, with its four sharps, was considered bright and festive in the Baroque era — a key associated with string music and outdoor celebration — and Bach gives the piece a correspondingly light, almost skipping quality that makes it one of the most immediately charming of the fifteen.
The contrapuntal technique is canonic imitation at the octave: the left hand enters with the same phrase the right hand has just stated, but an octave lower, so the two voices move through the piece as mirror images separated by time rather than pitch. Ornaments — trills and mordents that Bach wrote out explicitly — are integral to the piece's dancing character and cannot be omitted without losing its personality.
Practice path
Lock the dance rhythm before adding ornaments.
Work through the piece without ornaments first — just the plain notes in 3/8 at 50% tempo — to establish the dance lilt in both hands. The canonic structure means both hands play nearly identical material, so once the right hand is fluent the left hand learns quickly. Add ornaments only after the unadorned version is clean; trills placed into an unsteady rhythmic framework create confusion rather than decoration.
Score basis: Generated MusicXML from Mutopia MIDI. Public domain composition; CC BY-SA 3.0; MusicXML generated for Pianodemy. Attribution: Mutopia Project (https://www.mutopiaproject.org/cgibin/piece-info.cgi?id=159).
MIDI source: Mutopia Project (https://www.mutopiaproject.org/cgibin/piece-info.cgi?id=159). CC BY-SA 3.0.
Questions
Before you practice.
Short answers for learners and for searchers deciding whether this is the right version to start with.
01Is Bach Invention No. 6 in E major difficult?
It sits at late-beginner level. The four-sharp key signature requires careful finger placement, but the 3/8 meter keeps individual note values manageable. The 62-bar length is the main challenge.
02What makes BWV 777 different from the other inventions?
It is written in 3/8 time with a dance-like triple feel, and its E major key (four sharps) is the sharpest tonal color in the two-part invention set, giving it a uniquely bright and lively character.
How to use this V1
Ornaments last, dance first.
Use 50% tempo with ornaments removed on the first pass, then reintroduce them one at a time at 75% once the underlying rhythm is secure. The loop function is especially useful here for the measures containing multiple ornaments in both voices simultaneously. Wait-for-note is off for now; the tempo slider controls the pace of playback.