Minuet in G Major (BWV Anh. 114) by Christian Petzold

Minuet in G Major (BWV Anh. 114) is not a guitar composition. The piece is taken from a notebook of Johann Sebastian Bach's second wife, Anna Magdalena Bach, containing music from a variety of composers. It is now believed that Minuet in G Major (BWV Anh. 114) was a composition for harpsichord written by Christian Petzold. Petzold was a well-regarded organ player and composer who lived at the same time as Bach. For better or worse, the work is still associated with Bach by the public at large and continues to be published listing Bach as the composer.

Given that the music was originally written for a keyboard instrument, compromises had to be made in adapting it to guitar. Bass notes outside of the guitar's range have been dropped or substituted. Legato has been added where it makes sense for the instrument.

The source I used—an 1894 Breitkopf & Härtel edition—contains an appoggiatura before a dotted half note in measure 8. In the time of Bach and Petzold, the appoggiatura was supposed to take on half the value of the principal note or two-thirds when the principal note was dotted. Neither approach yields a satisfactory result for measure 8 on the guitar. Consequently, I translated the appoggiatura as taking a third of the value. Of the possible alternatives, I believe this produces the best-sounding result on the guitar. Other transcriptions unsatisfactorily omit the appoggiatura altogether.

As with most pieces adapted from other instruments, your fingering choices are many. You may ignore the choices reflected in this arrangement and devise your own. Inexperienced players may want to substitute the five-fret extension in measure 17 with a more traditional playing of the G and A notes on the second string at the seventh position.