Description
Menuet II, the partner of Menuet I, keeps the same E major step in 3/4 but answers it with a different melody, and it lies especially low and narrow, from B1 to B4. In Baroque suites it was customary to play two such dances in succession and then return to the first. Both minuets come from BWV 1006a, Bach's reworking of his solo-violin Partita No. 3, BWV 1006, for an instrument the autograph leaves unnamed.
Like Menuet I, it adds a bass line and harmony to the violin melody. It has 255 notes in about 99 seconds.
Its technical demands are modest, so you can concentrate on letting the melody sing calmly. Because it is meant to be played together with Menuet I, keeping the difference in character between the two in mind gives the pair its unity. After comparing it with Menuet I, slow the playback speed to check melody and bass through the hand colours, and repeat phrases with the A-B loop as you shape the expression.
The minuet, an elegant triple-time dance popular in the Baroque era, evoking the refined atmosphere of a courtly ball.
Browse all songs in Minuets →Sheet Music
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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