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Minuet with 5 Variations, Wq. 118/3

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788) · sheet music

  • Time 3/4
  • Levels 3
  • Passages 1

Your turn · both hands

 

 

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Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, German classical (1714–1788). The reading release has 1 passage from this piece at level 3; the reader above opens on the easiest, bars 5–8 for the left hand alone.

Practice the hard bars →

The hardest stretch is bars 5–8 at level 3.

Your practice path

Learn it the way teachers do: each hand on its own, then together, then the hard bars. Each step is a real graded passage of Minuet with 5 Variations, Wq. 118/3.

  1. Left hand alone · bars 5–8 level 3

How to play Minuet with 5 Variations, Wq. 118/3

  1. Tempo:A minuet is a moderate dance in three, so keep a graceful, walking tempo where each bar has one gentle swing. Do not rush the quiet left-hand rests.
  2. Left hand:The left-hand passages on this page begin with a quarter rest and then two notes, so the first beat is silent. Count one, two, three and place the notes on beats two and three.
  3. Right hand:Shape the tune as in a song, with the peak of each phrase as the loudest note. Keep the hand relaxed and the fingers close to the keys.
  4. Hands together:Check that the left-hand notes on beats two and three line up exactly with the held or moving right-hand notes. Count out loud while hands together at slow speed.
  5. Dynamics:Decide dynamics yourself and keep them small and clear. Echoing a phrase more softly is stylish in this period.
  6. Practice:Learn the theme first until you can play it from memory, then take each variation as a separate short piece. Keep a steady tempo from the theme into the variations.
  7. Reading:No sharps or flats in the signature, but an F sharp appears in the left-hand passages. Mark it lightly and look for it each time.

Common mistakes

  • Starting the left-hand notes on beat one instead of waiting through the rest. Fix: Count out loud and tap the first beat.
  • Turning the minuet into a march with heavy accents on every beat. Fix: Lean lightly on beat one and play beats two and three softly.
  • Changing tempo from the theme to the variations. Fix: Set a metronome mark for the theme and stay within it for the variations unless you choose a change deliberately.

Structure: theme and variations

A minuet theme in C major is followed by five variations. The sources checked do not describe the variations one by one, so the set is treated here as one 3/4 dance heard in successive versions; the complete-edition editors note that Bach later added inner voices to the last one.

Theme · The minuet (C major)
A plain dance tune in 3/4, with the left hand marking the pulse. This is the tune to keep in your ear while reading the variations.
Vars. 1-4 · Variations
Each variation reworks the theme while keeping the minuet pulse. The left-hand passages on this page start after a rest on the first beat, so count carefully.
Var. 5 · Final variation
The last variation, where Bach's later revision added inner voices, so expect fuller textures to read than in the theme.

About Minuet with 5 Variations, Wq. 118/3

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was born in Weimar in 1714, a son of Johann Sebastian Bach, and died in Hamburg in 1788. He entered the service of Crown Prince Frederick, later Frederick the Great, in Berlin in 1738, left in 1768, and that year succeeded his godfather Telemann as Kapellmeister in Hamburg. He is the leading figure of the empfindsamer Stil, the sensitive style, and Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven all admired and collected his music.

The Minuet with 5 Variations, Wq. 118/3 (H. 44), is a small keyboard set in C major composed in Berlin in 1745. Bach's autograph survives in the Berlin State Library, but almost no other copies from his Berlin years do, and the editors of the complete C.P.E. Bach edition suggest he kept the piece from circulating. His later revisions were slight, adding inner voices to the final variation.

The theme is a minuet, a dance in triple meter, and each variation keeps its outline while changing the surface. For a learner the passages on this page are gentle: a left hand that waits out the first beat and answers on beats two and three, in a modest range.

  • The surviving autograph, in Bach's own hand, is held as Mus.ms. Bach P 749 in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
  • C.P.E. Bach's Wq numbers come from Alfred Wotquenne's 1906 catalogue and his H numbers from Eugene Helm's 1989 catalogue.
  • The Leipzig publisher Breitkopf offered this set in manuscript copies in 1763, together with Wq 118/4 and 118/5, as three Partite for harpsichord.
  • A remark credited to Mozart, Bach is the father, we are the children, comes to us secondhand, printed by Friedrich Rochlitz decades after Mozart's death.

Why the first passage is level 3

That passage is level 3 rather than 2 because it carries accidentals outside the key, it leaps a fourth.

No sharps or flats in the signature (C major), with a few accidentals such as F sharp. Left-hand passages here begin with a rest on beat one.

Questions about Minuet with 5 Variations, Wq. 118/3

How hard is Minuet with 5 Variations, Wq. 118/3 to play?
Its passages grade from level 3 on Real Sight Reader's ten-level reading scale, which keeps all of it within beginner reading. The hardest stretch is bars 5–8 at level 3.
Is there an easy part of Minuet with 5 Variations, Wq. 118/3 for beginners?
Yes. Start with bars 5–8 for the left hand alone, the level-3 passage in the reader at the top of this page; it is level 3 because it carries accidentals outside the key and it leaps a fourth.
What key and time signature is Minuet with 5 Variations, Wq. 118/3 in?
The engraving on this page is in 3/4 time.
Who composed Minuet with 5 Variations, Wq. 118/3?
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, German classical (1714–1788). Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was born in Weimar in 1714, a son of Johann Sebastian Bach, and died in Hamburg in 1788.
Can I practice Minuet with 5 Variations, Wq. 118/3 online for free?
Yes. The reader on this page plays any of the one graded passage from Minuet with 5 Variations, Wq. 118/3 in your browser, with an on-screen keyboard or a MIDI keyboard, and marks every note as you play. No signup.
How old is C.P.E. Bach's Minuet with 5 Variations?
It was composed in Berlin in 1745, and Bach's own manuscript of it survives.
What do Wq. and H. mean in the title?
They are two catalogues of C.P.E. Bach's works: Wotquenne (Wq., 1906) and Helm (H., 1989). This piece is Wq. 118/3 and H. 44.
Where is the original manuscript?
Bach's autograph is in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin under the shelfmark Mus.ms. Bach P 749.

Every passage, easiest first

The reading release grades one passage of this piece. Open any of them in the reader:

Level 3
bars 5–8 left hand

More pieces to sight-read

Score: public-domain engraving from the corpus (pdmx), graded by the piano-reading-v2-20261023-identity-audit reading release.

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