Minuet in G, by Petzold
Every score here is public domain, free to read, print and keep. Open it in the browser and it plays, at whatever tempo you can read it.
Get the practice plan for Minuet in G
Here it is. Check your inbox for day 1.
- Hear it through at Slow (63 bpm). Open it in the reader, choose Slow, and follow the page with your eyes without playing.
- 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, C, Am and Bm7. 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, 63 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (95 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 (under a minute) 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
For two hundred years this was Bach's most famous minuet, copied into his wife Anna Magdalena's notebook: a family album of pieces the Bach household played at home. Scholars now know it is by Christian Petzold, but the notebook, and the charm, are genuine.
How to play it
A minuet is a dance in three: keep it upright and elegant, with a little lift on the third beat, as if bowing to a partner.
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.
Who Petzold was
Dresden organist whose name almost nobody knew until 1970, when the Minuet in G that every piano student learns as their first Bach was found to be his. It sits in the notebook Bach kept for his wife Anna Magdalena, which is a household anthology of pieces the family liked rather than a collection of his own, and the attribution had simply been assumed for two centuries. Petzold was well regarded in his own city and almost none of his music survives, so the one piece that does is a famous one wearing somebody else's name.
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.