Description
A short ornamented figure in the right hand is repeated note for note by the left in the following bar, and so this A minor menuet begins. The Bach-Gesellschaft edition (volume 43) that Mutopia transcribed gives the suite as it was entered in the 1725 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, where this movement is titled Menuet. In the form published in 1731 as Part I of the Clavier-Übung, this movement became a Burlesca, and no movement bears the name Menuet.
In triple metre, the first half moves forward with the hands passing the figure between them and closes with first and second endings that finish differently. The second half starts the same figure from another pitch, after which a stream of semiquavers in the right hand climbs step by step through the register while the left hand marks a walking pace in quavers. It is busy for a menuet, its motion growing finer towards the end.
An advanced movement in which the first thing is to give the ornament on the opening figure the same shape in both hands. Following with the hand colours which hand holds the figure at any moment makes the imitation easy to see. Repeat the semiquaver runs of the second half with the A-B loop at a lower playback speed, checking that they stay vertically aligned with the left-hand quavers, before bringing the speed back up.
Suite-form works from the Baroque era; Bach's Partitas, a sequence of varied dances, are ranked among the greatest keyboard works.
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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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