Invention No. 1 BWV 772 · piano sheet music & MIDI file
Bach's Invention No. 1 as a free MIDI file, with a two-voice piano preview and the sheet music PDF from the same engraving.
Preview played right in your browser with the app's real piano (lightweight version). Inside Pianovera: full multi-layer sound, fingering display and Wait mode.
Bach wrote the fifteen Inventions as a method for his own children and stated the goal in the preface: learn to play cleanly in two voices and develop a singing style. Three centuries on, nobody has designed anything better, and the MIDI of the first of the set is still the rite of passage.
The principle fits in one line: a seven-note motif hops endlessly from hand to hand, inverted, transposed, stretched. Both your hands become equal singers, which feels wrong at first if you come from melody-plus-accompaniment music. Push through. It's the highest-yield investment in piano playing we know.
What you'll be working on
- Two strictly equal voices (no hand gets to "accompany")
- Recognizing the motif in all its disguises, even upside down
- Baroque articulation: detached, danced, no pedal
- Hands separate first, singing the other voice out loud
Playing Invention No. 1 BWV 772 on piano with Pianovera
Pianovera's two hand colors turn the Invention into a visible dialogue: you literally watch the motif jump from the blue hand to the green one. Wait mode hands-separate, then together at 60%. That's the method, and it works.
Open Invention No. 1 BWV 772 in Pianovera: notes fall toward the keyboard, each hand gets its color, and Wait mode is there if you're starting out.
Try Pianovera for freeDownload the Invention No. 1 BWV 772 MIDI and sheet music
Two files are waiting for you: the Invention No. 1 BWV 772 piano MIDI file (4 KB, opens in Pianovera or any MIDI player) and the Invention No. 1 BWV 772 piano sheet music PDF (65 KB, printable). Both come from the same engraving: what you read on the score is exactly what you hear in the preview.
The work itself is in the public domain. This MIDI engraving comes from the Mutopia Project, typeset by Jeff Covey, under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license (free reuse with attribution, commercial included).
About this piece
Is Invention No. 1 BWV 772 hard to play on piano?
We rate it intermediate: 458 notes over 1:06, spanning C2 to C6. The first thing to work on: two strictly equal voices (no hand gets to "accompany").
Where can I get the sheet music for Invention No. 1 BWV 772?
Right on this page: the "View the sheet music" button opens the PDF (65 KB), engraved by the Mutopia Project from the same source as the MIDI file, CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. View it, print it, keep it.
Is the Invention No. 1 BWV 772 MIDI file really free?
Yes. Johann Sebastian Bach died more than 70 years ago, so the work (1723) is public domain. This MIDI engraving is under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license: free to use, commercially included, with credit to Jeff Covey.