Crab Invention

for viola duo
(2018)

Click here to download the original crab canon notation.
A full-score realization of the piece is available as part of “Three Viola Duets”.
You can listen to a performance of this piece played by two contrabasses here:
Crab Invention

This piece was composed in March, 2018 to commemorate the 333rd birthday of J. S. Bach. I call it “Crab Invention” because, like a two-part invention, it employs the interplay (or dialogue) of two melodic lines, but is also a crab canon. It begins with two motives (or themes), one in each part that are imitated to create “double counterpoint” (themes exchange voices). Unlike most inventions, though, the two voices continue imitating each other (sometimes in inversion) throughout the piece. Also, because it is a crab canon, the entire piece is a single melodic line that, when accompanied by the retrograde of itself, creates the two-part invention described above. Before the invention proper begins, there is a slow introduction that returns (in reverse) at the end as a coda. As might be expected, the B-A-C-H motive is developed throughout the piece. Eventually, two movements were added and this piece became part of “Three Viola Duets”.

(Duration Ca. 2:30)