Description
Among the many major-key minuets in Anna Magdalena's notebook, this C minor one, BWV Anh. 121, is one of the few in a minor key. The notebook holds several minuets in G and B-flat major. This one carries no composer's name, and whether Bach himself wrote it has not been confirmed.
It is in C minor and 3/4, a short binary minuet with each half repeated, in which the left hand discreetly supports the right-hand melody, a clear layout in just two parts. The plain, little-ornamented writing carries a quiet minor-key shadow. The range runs from F2 to A-flat 5, fitting on a 61-key keyboard, and with 149 notes in about 41 seconds it has the fewest notes of the pieces here.
With so few notes, it is technically approachable. In return, the result depends on a tone that brings out the minor-key colour and on keeping the left hand quieter than the melody. Check the roles of the two hands through the hand colours, and slow the playback speed while listening for whether the left hand covers the melody; the quiet melancholy will come through clearly.
The minuet, an elegant triple-time dance popular in the Baroque era, evoking the refined atmosphere of a courtly ball.
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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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