Sonata in G major, Hob. XVI:27: II. Menuetto and Trio, by Haydn
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Get the practice plan for Sonata in G major, Hob. XVI:27: II. Menuetto and Trio
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- Hear it through at Slow (36 bpm). Open it in the reader, choose Slow, and follow the page with your eyes without playing. As it plays, count 3 to the bar.
- Learn the right hand of bars 1 to 8 on its own, in G major. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: G, D7, Gmaj7 and Caug. Play each one as a block in your left hand and say its name, so you know what the harmony is before the left hand has to move.
- Learn the left hand of the same bars on its own. Keep it quiet and even: it is the floor the tune stands on.
- Put hands together at Slow, 36 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (54 bpm) once Slow feels easy three times in a row. Then learn the next 8 bars the same way: right hand, left hand, together.
- Play the whole piece (about 3 minutes) from the start, at whatever speed keeps it going. A steady run with a few slips beats a fast one that stops.
About this piece
From a set of six keyboard sonatas Haydn wrote in 1776. The minuet is bright and graceful in G major, and the trio turns to G minor for a darker middle before the minuet returns.
How to play it
Keep the minuet light, with one easy beat per bar, then colour the trio more quietly so the change to minor is heard. Watch the ornaments and slurs.
Reading it, and printing it
The score opens in Artform's reader, which shows the music as engraved notation and plays it back so you can hear the line before you try it. You can slow the tempo down, loop a passage that is not working yet, and print the page when you would rather have paper on the stand.
The file itself is MusicXML, which MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale and Dorico all open, so the notes are yours to keep whatever you read them in.
Edition: Mutopia Project #186, in the public domain. Converted to MusicXML by Artform and checked note for note against the original.
More free Haydn sheet music
Who Haydn was
Austrian composer who spent thirty years in near isolation as house musician to the Esterházy princes, and used the time to invent, more or less single-handedly, the symphony and the string quartet as later composers would understand them. Cut off from fashion, he wrote, in his own words, because he was forced to become original. He taught Beethoven, who found him infuriating, and he was funny on purpose: the Surprise Symphony's chord exists to wake up an audience that had eaten too well. The tune he wrote for the Emperor is now the German national anthem.
Learn the music behind it
Reading a piece and understanding it are different skills. If you want the harmony under this one, the chord trainer teaches chords the way songs use them, and the scale pages cover the fingering for every key, including G major.