How the sheet is written
The minuet is in three beats to the bar, and nearly every bar has one quarter note followed by four eighth notes, or three quarter notes. In the sheet a space ends a beat, and the eighth notes are joined together and to the note after them. So d opasd o o reads: D on beat one, then G A B C as quick notes leading to D, then G and G.
Each line is four bars. Lines one and three are the same; lines two and four differ only at the end, where line two stops on A (p - - - -, held three beats) and line four comes home to G (o - - - -).
Keys and hands
This sheet is the right hand of the first half, 16 bars, which is the part most people know. The melody runs from F♯4 (I) to G5 (h): the high G that tops the rising run in bars three and eleven is the highest note. The two capitals are both F sharps, I and G. With the left hand free, a computer keyboard player can keep the right hand over o p a s d f and reach out to h and down to I.
The written piece has small ornaments (a mordent on some notes and a grace note before the first held A); the sheet leaves them out so each key is pressed once.
Practising it
The eighth-note runs are where fingers stumble. Play each run on its own until it is even, opasd, sdfGh, dsapa, sapoI, then put the bars back together. Listen at 75% before trying to keep up at normal speed; a minuet should feel like a calm dance, not a race.
About the minuet
The Minuet in G major survives in the notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach, Johann Sebastian’s wife, begun in 1725; she copied it herself, and the manuscript is in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Mus.ms. Bach P 225). It was catalogued among Bach’s doubtful works as BWV Anhang 114; IMSLP now lists it under Christian Petzold and notes that it was formerly attributed to Bach. It is paired in the notebook with a minuet in G minor, BWV Anh. 115, thought to come from the same suite. Nearly three centuries old, it is free for anyone to play.
For a Baroque piece in the same letter layout with a bass line, try the Canon in D.