invention

invention, in music, any of a number of markedly dissimilar compositional forms dating from the 16th century to the present. While its exact meaning has never been defined, the term has often been affixed to compositions of a novel, progressive character—i.e., compositions that do not fit established categories. The earliest-known use of the term in Premier livre des inventions musicales (1555; “First Book of Musical Inventions”) by the Frenchman Clément Janequin clearly alludes to the composer’s highly original programmatic chansons—secular French part-songs containing extramusical allusions (e.g., imitations of battle sounds and birdcalls). Similarly capricious or novel effects occur in John Dowland’s Invention for Two to Play upon One Lute (1597); Lodovico da Viadana’s Cento concerti ecclesiastici…Nova inventione (1602; “One-Hundred Ecclesiastical Concerti…New Invention”), the first sacred collection to require a basso continuo; and Antonio Vivaldi’s Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’invenzione, Opus 8 (1720; “The Contest Between Harmony and Invention”), which contains, among others, a number of programmatic concerti.

Best known perhaps is the set of two-part inventions and 15 three-part sinfonias (often called Three-Part Inventions) for harpsichord (c. 1720) by J.S. Bach, each of which is characterized by the contrapuntal elaboration of a single melodic idea and for which Francesco Bonporti’s Invenzioni for violin and bass (1712) may have served as a model.

Twentieth-century composers of pieces entitled “Invention” include the Austrian Alban Berg and the Russian-American composer Alexander Tcherepnin, who followed Bach’s lead more or less directly.