Minuet in G Major: Artistry

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman,
and in this lesson we're going to be learning ways to play "Minuet in G Major" with artistry.
For this lesson I'm assuming that you've already learned both the right hand and left hand parts for the entire piece,
and that you've already gotten started learning it hands together too.
Let's get started by revisiting the score.
Now one thing I want you to recognize about pieces from the baroque period,
and this piece is from the baroque period, which was from about 1600 to the year 1750.
Any pieces coming from that time period tend to have very few markings in them.
Now in this score, you see dynamic marks, you see a tempo indication, but I was the one who added those in.
If you look at the original manuscript from the original Anna Magdalena Bach Notebook,
you'll see no tempo indication,
no dynamics,
no staccatos, no accent marks,
any kind of articulations, just the notes and a couple of ornaments like the mordants that we've talked about.
So if you ever see a piece from the baroque period and you see dynamic marks or staccati,
just know that those were placed in later by an editor.
In this case, I was the editor for this piece so I added finger numbers, I added some dynamics,
I chose a tempo indication,
but it doesn't have to be allegretto.
I've heard this piece
played at more of an andante or moderato speed.
I just happen to like it
a little bit more lively which is why I picked allegretto.
So with baroque pieces you get to make a lot of choices.
If you see a mezzo piano mark, remember I put that there not Bach,
and so you could take the liberty of choosing something else. Maybe you want to start mezzo forte instead of mezzo piano.
The important thing is to figure out what is the character or mood of the piece and try to convey that mood.
Sometimes I like to make a list of mood words at the top of my piece, and for this piece I think of it as a happy piece.
So I might write happy, or other words that come to mind
are beautiful or flowing,
and you might have other words that come to mind for you,
but it's important to know what is the mood you're trying to create so you can make it tell the right kind of story.
Another important job I think is finding the phrases within a piece.
Again, later composers after the baroque period would start marking phrases with phrase marks,
but baroque composers often again left that to the performer,
but I think of these first two measures as a phrase.
The nice thing about deciding your phrase is then you can decide how to shape it.
Most often phrases crescendo to some climax point in the middle,
or near the middle, or sometimes towards the end.
But I kind of think of this note as our climax note, and then as you near the end of a phrase you usually decrescendo.
It might be a nice way to phrase that.
And then I think of this as another phrase.
And then you have to think about how those two phrases interact with each other.
Is this phrase louder than this one or softer than this one?
Well, since this time the phrase
hits an even higher point than this phrase,
I like to think of this phrase maybe crescendoing even a little louder.
And then once again I'm going to get gentle on those two repeated G's.
Getting softer there to round out the phrase.
What about the very first note?
You might think, well since it's the start of a crescendo we want to make this pretty soft, but it's also beat 1.
And remember in our time signature rules, beat 1 is generally a slightly stronger beat
than the other beat. So I might play this one a little bit stronger,
then drop softer here, build back up, then get softer again here.
Then play a little bit stronger there again, grow even louder, and then get softer again here.
The music is always in flux.
A rule of thumb that I like to keep in mind is no two notes in a row should ever sound the same.
They're always in motion. Always getting softer or louder, then softer again.
That's how you keep the music interesting.
Always think of the notes being alive and in motion.
Now, I'd like you to pause the video and practice playing just right hand alone and experiment
with the phrasing of this. See how beautiful you can make each phrase, and then press play to go on.
Now on line two I think of these as shorter phrases.
I think of this measure
as a phrase, and
I like to do a little quick crescendo, decrescendo on those moving eighth notes just to give them some life.
Notice I'm making this measure a phrase all by itself with a crescendo, decrescendo. It has to happen pretty fast.
And I like to think of this as one longer phrase this time.
And then a cool thing happens here. The left hand finally has something interesting. So far in the piece the right hand h ...