Minuet in G

This is the famous "Bach" minuet — the one from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach (1725) that generations of pianists learned as Bach's. Twentieth-century scholarship reattributed it to Georg Böhm, the Lüneburg organist J. S. Bach knew personally as a young man, and the piece is now correctly catalogued under Böhm's name. The Trinity Grade 2 listing reflects the modern attribution while keeping the piece in its familiar pedagogical place.

Technically the minuet is a study in two-voice counterpoint at first-grade level. The right hand carries an arching melody; the left hand has its own clear melodic line beneath it, not just a chordal underpinning. The student's job is to make both lines speak — not to play the right hand carefully and let the left hand chug along. Both hands sit comfortably; there are no awkward stretches.

The principal pitfall is treating the left hand as accompaniment. The piece collapses into a school exercise that way. Practise the left hand alone, shape it, then re-add the right hand. A second pitfall is over-pedalling — this is Baroque writing, and clean finger-legato in both hands serves it far better than a continuous pedal wash.

The full Anna Magdalena Notebook is on IMSLP. Hearing this minuet on harpsichord (several public-domain recordings exist) gives an immediate sense of the cleaner, lighter Baroque touch that the piano arrangement is reaching for.