The Minuet in G major did not begin as a work of its own — it began as a page copied into someone else's book. In 1725 Bach gave his second wife Anna Magdalena a blank keyboard album, and the household went on filling it for years with pieces they liked; this one sits fourth. The full piano score is on screen, note by note.
It carried the wrong name for two hundred and fifty years
That album was a household object, not a publication. Bach's hand appears in it, Anna Magdalena's appears in it, and so do others'; what went in was partly Bach's own music and partly pieces the family liked by other people. This minuet and the G minor one after it are numbers 4 and 5.
Because it sat in a book in Bach's house, it went out into the world under his name. For more than two centuries it was the "Bach minuet" that countless people met while learning the piano.
In 1979 Hans-Joachim Schulze published his finding in the Bach-Jahrbuch: the two minuets come from a harpsichord suite written in 1720 by Christian Petzold. Petzold was born in 1677, became organist at the Sophienkirche in Dresden in 1703 and court chamber composer and organist from 1709; his contemporaries rated him one of the most famous organists of the day, and only a handful of his pieces survive. The 1990 edition of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis moved both minuets formally to his name, out of the doubtful works and into the ones that are not Bach's.
The tune was borrowed once more. In 1965 Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell put words to it as "A Lover's Concerto", and The Toys took it into the charts — most people meet that song first and the minuet underneath it second.
In 1965 it got words and went to number two
The American songwriters Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell set words to this minuet's melody as A Lover's Concerto, a hit for the girl group The Toys in 1965 that reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100.
The obvious difference is the metre: the minuet is in three, the song in four. The melodic line is barely touched — hum the song, then listen here, and it is the same line walking differently.
The same path twice — the second time you know where it turns
One line sings in the right hand from beginning to end; the left hand walks underneath it, step after step, never chasing and never rushing. Those are the only two things happening.
Sixteen bars go by and then it turns round and walks the same way again, not a note changed. The second pass is not repetition — on the first you were finding the way, on the second you already know where the next turn is, and you loosen up with it. That is the most comfortable thing about this piece.
The second half goes further out. A note appears that does not belong to the road you were on, and the direction tilts; after one loop round it comes back onto the same stones, and then walks that way twice as well. At the end the right hand holds one long note still while the left takes the last three steps alone.
Thirty-two bars written, sixty-four heard
Thirty-two bars are written down, in two halves of sixteen, each half played twice — so what you hear is sixty-four. This version plays both passes, and the score on screen goes round twice with it.
In the first half, bars 1 to 6 and bars 9 to 14 are note for note the same in the right hand; only the last two bars differ — the first time it settles on the note above, the second time it drops home. The left hand plays one note per bar through bars 2 to 6, holding it for all three beats, and from bar 4 walks down a step at a time.
In the second half the first sharp of the whole piece arrives in bar 20, tilting the melody towards another resting point, which it reaches in bar 24. Bars 21 and 29 each hold a full bar of six eighth notes climbing — the longest runs in the piece. In the last bar the right hand presses three notes down together while the left hand walks out the remaining three.
The hard part is not the fingers, it is the walking left hand
This is often the first piece someone memorises all the way through; every note sits inside an open hand.
In the first half the left hand has five bars where it plays a single note and has to hold it for three beats. Let go early and the line above loses its floor.
The eighth notes in the right hand have to come out the same length, one after another. There is no harmony here to hide in — half a note of hurry is audible.
The sharp in bar 20 is the only accidental in the piece and the easiest thing to miss. In the second half the climbing runs in bars 21 and 29 want to go up in one breath, without a pause in the middle.
We rate this 1 out of 5.
The next one is in the same album
Right after this one: the Minuet in G minor, BWV Anh. 115 — also Petzold's, also copied into the same album.
Another piece out of a Bach household notebook: the Prelude in C major, BWV 846, whose early form was written into the keyboard booklet Bach started for his eldest son.
The song that borrowed this tune: "A Lover's Concerto" by The Toys. Hear the minuet first and you notice it walks the same road.
