Four Sample Baroque Inventions
for Keyboard(s)
Notes
Here is a set of sequential variations on a simple ground bass, appropriate for
generic keyboard instrument(s). This PDF booklet of photocopied pencil pages
dating from 1966 constitutes one of several contrapuntal scores to be added
piecemeal, starting sequentially in January 2025. These samples were class projects for an upper division Baroque
Counterpoint course, offered in 2006 by the University of Michigan School of
Music's theory department. This copy begins with four separate iterations of a free
four-measure ground bass in three-voice counterpoint; the original score is in
pencil and neatly rendered here, unlike other scores from so called
working (i.e. 'rough') copies.
The music professor who taught the course guided a select gathering of advanced
theory students for a full semester of study. He was a gentle, soft spoken
individual, Dr. Wallace Berry (1928-1991), a music theorist and composer who
served as a member of the university faculty; in later years he taught at the University of
British Columbia.* As a class offering, the assembled students were assigned
sequential formal structures to emulate, one by one, after due study of classic
examples, such as Johann Sebastian Bach's Two Part Inventions and Three Part
Sinfonias for clavier.
*See:
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/wallace-berry-emc
Click
the image below to download a PDF booklet
available in January 2026
