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Repertoire Christian Petzold 1725 BWV Anh. 114

Minuet in G major

From the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, BWV Anh. 114

Easy Full

Two steps

First the easy arrangement, then the full version: the same notes, with more voices and detail.

Easy version Lesson 03 Minuet in G major Full version Lesson 08 The Minuet: the full version

The scores

Both versions in full: listen to them before you open the lesson.

The story of the piece

In 1725 Johann Sebastian Bach gave his wife, Anna Magdalena, a music notebook, her second one: he had started the first for her in 1722. Anna Magdalena was a singer, and the notebook became the family's music book for home. It holds arias, chorales and suites by Bach himself and pieces by other composers, such as Couperin and Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel. Several people copied them in, Anna Magdalena among them.

The Minuet in G major is entered in the notebook as number 4, with a Minuet in G minor straight after it. For a long time both were thought to be by Bach. In the catalogue of his works (BWV) they stand in the appendix, the Anhang, hence the "Anh." in the number. The appendix is where the catalogue gathers lost works, works of doubtful authorship and works wrongly credited to Bach. The composer was found in 1979 by the musicologist Hans-Joachim Schulze: the two minuets, one after the other, belong to a harpsichord suite by Christian Petzold (1677–1733), organist of the Sophienkirche in Dresden and chamber composer to the court. The suite has come down to us in a manuscript copy.

In lesson 03 you play the easy version, the first half of the minuet, sixteen bars with their repeat: the melody in the right hand and a simple bass in the left. In lesson 08 you play the whole minuet in two voices, after the Bach-Gesellschaft edition. The ornaments printed there are replaced in our score by their main notes.