Musical rhetoric in J S Bach's two-part inventions and implications for their performance on the modern piano

Musical rhetoric, the application of the art of speech to music, is a basic principle of German Baroque composition. J. S. Bach had a close relationship to rhetoric, as well as musical rhetoric, and he followed the Baroque ideal of rhetorical structuring and affective content in his compositions. As shown by other scholars, he also employed musical rhetoric in his purely instrumental compositions. The author investigates the elements of musical rhetoric in J. S. Bach's Two-part Inventions and provides suggestions for their performance on the modern piano, as implied by the analysis.