Description
A very short air in F major, written for the sake of singing rather than to show off any technique. Air is simply the name for a piece meant to sing like a song. In the notebook kept for Anna Magdalena Bach, small songs like this one sit alongside dances and chorales without distinction.
In F major and common time, fewer than a hundred notes carry a melody that rises and falls unhurriedly while the left hand quietly outlines the harmony. Almost nothing is ornamented, so the expression rests entirely on how long each note is held and when it is handed to the next. The whole thing lasts about half a minute.
Its technical demands are among the lightest on the site, which is exactly what makes it useful. It leaves time to work on the foundations: connecting notes in a true legato, keeping the accompaniment a level below the melody, and not rushing the ends of phrases. It works equally well as a first piece and as a warm-up.
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Sheet music provided by Mutopia Project
About the Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Johann Sebastian Bach was the towering figure of German Baroque music, serving for decades as Cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. Renowned for his mastery of counterpoint, he laid the foundations of keyboard music with works such as The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Inventions. This site includes minuets and polonaises from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, the Inventions and Sinfonias, and fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier. The Notebook pieces are catalogued with BWV Anh. (appendix) numbers, but many are by other composers - Petzold's minuets among them - or by no one known, and most of their song pages give the current view of who wrote them.
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