Minuet in G major, BWV Anh. 116

This G-major minuet from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach (1725) is the slightly less famous companion to BWV Anh. 114 — both pieces were credited to Bach for two centuries before twentieth-century scholarship reattributed them to Christian Petzold, organist at the Sophienkirche in Dresden during Bach's working life. The Trinity Grade 3 list keeps the music in its accustomed pedagogical place under its corrected attribution.

Technically this minuet sits at the threshold of fluent two-part keyboard playing. The right hand carries an arching minuet line with small ornamental turns; the left hand has its own clear melodic line beneath it, not an accompaniment but a counter-voice. The student must voice the two lines as independent melodies and shape the cadences across the strain divisions. There is one small finger-substitution in the right hand that benefits from a deliberate fingering plan.

Two pitfalls. First, students often play the right hand musically and let the left hand chug along — the piece collapses into a school exercise that way. Practise the left hand alone, shape it, then re-add the right hand. Second, the ornaments (small written-out turns at the cadences) often get hurried; play them slowly enough that each note speaks before resolving.

The full Anna Magdalena Notebook is on IMSLP. Hearing both Petzold minuets in sequence on harpsichord makes the modal contrast with the G-minor companion immediately legible.