Description
A D major musette whose left hand imitates the drone of a bagpipe. A musette is a French bagpipe-like folk instrument, and by extension the name of a pastoral piece written in its imitation. No composer has been identified; it was written into the notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, begun in 1725, as one of the small pieces the household played day to day.
In D major and duple time, the left-hand tonic hardly lets go from bar to bar. Over it the right hand sings in short, springing figures, and the piece stays bright to the end on the simplest of harmonies. A brief shadow of the minor passes through the middle before the pastoral scene returns.
At around twenty seconds it is one of the shortest pieces on the site. It spans four octaves and asks for no stretches. The work is all in the left hand: holding the drone at an even volume without letting it turn rigid. Only when that steady pulse meets the light spring of the right hand does the country dance come to life.
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Sheet music provided by Mutopia Project
What this piece teaches
Another staple of the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach: a bright dance that recalls the bagpipe, with the left hand leaping in octaves - practice in treating the left hand as an independent part with its own rhythm.
How to practise it
- Keep the hand open at the octave as it moves. Repeat the left hand alone at 0.5x.
- It is short; loop the whole piece and play it through many times.
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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