Description
A march in E-flat major, its dotted rhythms setting a stately stride. It comes from the 1725 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, which also holds pieces by family members and acquaintances and was used for playing and study at home. The Anh. in its number marks a work whose attribution to Bach is unconfirmed, and who actually wrote it is not known.
In E-flat major and 2/2, it keeps the clear metre of a march throughout. It has 357 notes in 73 seconds, and its range runs from B-flat 1 to C6, the lowest note below the left end of a 61-key keyboard, though an octave shift fits it on one.
Rated intermediate. E-flat major uses three black keys, and the hand positions take some getting used to at first. The task is to keep the dotted rhythms crisp and hold the step of a march in two. Lower the playback speed to check the length of the dots, repeat short phrases with the A-B loop, and follow the right-hand melody and left-hand bass with the hand colours. Played alongside the minuets and polonaises of the same notebook, its different character stands out.
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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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