Description
Tempo di Minuetta means "in the tempo of a minuet": the title describes pace and character rather than naming the dance itself. It is the fifth movement of Partita No. 5 in G major, placed between the Sarabande and the Passepied. The six partitas were published together in 1731 as Part I of the Clavier-Übung.
It moves lightly in a moderate, minuet-like 3/4. At 79 seconds and 333 notes it is one of the shortest and sparest movements in the suite, and its narrow range, G2 to B5, fits easily on a 61-key keyboard.
Among the more approachable movements of No. 5, it sits at intermediate level. The task is keeping the sense of triple time: a light weight on the first beat, without letting each bar line turn heavy. Lower the playback speed to hear the flow of the beat, repeat short phrases with the A-B loop, and check what each hand is doing with the hand colours. Its length also makes it a good first movement to try when starting on the partitas.
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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