Description
A small minuet in A minor whose composer remains unknown. It survives because it was copied into the 1725 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, the household album where Bach's own pieces sit beside music by others that the family liked. What it preserves is a picture of how dance music was played at home in the 1720s.
In triple time, the melody and the left hand answer one another back and forth while the harmony stays plain, letting the shading of the minor mode carry the expression on its own. It is a binary form with both halves repeated; the second opens into the relative major before finding its way back, exactly as the dance convention prescribes.
With around 170 notes across four octaves, it is a manageable first piece in a minor key. There are no real obstacles in it, but placing a natural weight on the first beat and carrying phrases past the two- and four-bar joints instead of stopping at them is what makes it sound like a dance rather than an exercise.
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
What this piece teaches
The A minor minuet from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach (its composer has not been established). In triple time, the right-hand melody and the left hand answer each other back and forth, in a binary form with each half repeated.
How to practise it
- Using the hand colours, find the places where one hand rests while the other answers. Whichever hand is answering leads.
- Give the first beat a natural weight, and carry each phrase on past its joins rather than stopping - that is what makes it a dance.
- The second half heads for the relative major, C, before finding its way back to A minor. Follow the change of colour in the score view.
Practice guides using this piece
Connecting a MIDI keyboard and using practice mode
How to connect a digital piano or MIDI keyboard to the browser, and how practice mode waits for the right keys - and what it does not check.
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.
View all works by Bach →