Chris Bonds wrote:

>One of my college professors told us in a counterpoint class that there
>was no art in the Bach inventions, only craft.  He said that to reinforce
>the idea that if we learned the craft of counterpoint well enough we could
>write inventions equal to Bach's.

I hope you didn't pay too much attention to this professor.  I think it
might have been instructive to have asked him to prove that contention.
Had *he*, for example, learned the craft of counterpoint well enough to
write inventions equal to Bach's? (A safe question.) You may have wanted
to wait until the course was completed before asking such questions!

I suppose that a good instructor in counterpoint or polyphony need not, of
necessity, be able to hear the "art" in Bach's 2&3 part inventions but one
wonders why such an instructor would make such a statement without being
able to back it with proof -- either from his own examples or those of some
other composer(s).  One also wonders why such an instructor isn't down the
hall teaching Harmony or Orchestration classes.

Dave Pitzer