Musette (from the Anna Magdalena Notebook)

About this arrangement

A musette is a dance that imitates the French bagpipe, so the left hand keeps up a bouncing drone, leaping between two Cs an octave apart, while the tune skips above it. This is the first section of the piece from the 1725 Anna Magdalena notebook, written in D major; here it is in C major, and the left hand is the notebook’s own, with the drone moved up an octave so it sits in the beginner’s range. The right hand starts on the high G just above the stave, with runs of semiquavers (sixteenth notes) down the scale in bars 1 and 2, then drops to the middle of the keyboard for bars 3 and 4, so the hand has to move. In bars 3 and 4 the left hand leaves the drone and plays a little tune of its own.

Practice tip: Practise the left hand’s drone alone, bouncing thumb and little finger between the two Cs, until it is light and even. Then add the right hand slowly; the semiquaver runs are just the scale coming down from G to C.

A short history

The Musette in D major is one of the small pieces in the second notebook that Johann Sebastian Bach began in 1725 for his wife Anna Magdalena, the same book that holds the Minuet in G. For a long time it was printed as Bach’s own and given the number BWV Anh. 126, but the pieces in the notebook were copied in by several hands and many are by other composers, so today it is listed as anonymous; “Anh.” (Anhang, appendix) marks that doubt.

A musette was a small bagpipe fashionable at the French court, and also the name for a dance written to sound like one, with a drone in the bass and a cheerful tune above. This one has three sections: the opening in D major, a middle section that wanders into other keys with some surprising sharps, and the opening again.

It has been a standard early piece for piano students for well over a century and still appears in the first books of most methods.

Quick facts

Tune

Anonymous (Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, 1725)

Key

C major

Time signature

2/4

Length

8 bars, played twice

Tempo

Bouncing, crotchet = 100

Difficulty

Level 5: A wider range (piece 157 of 201)

Type

Classical

Hands

Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left

Copyright

Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use

Questions and answers