Johann Sebastian Bach: piano pieces, easiest first
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) was a German composer and organist, one of the greatest in the history of Western music. He worked as a church and court musician in Weimar and Köthen, and from 1723 until his death in Leipzig, as cantor of St. Thomas's Church. He wrote cantatas, passions, concertos and a great deal of keyboard music.
Much of that keyboard music was written to teach: little preludes for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann; the fifteen two-part Inventions, to teach two independent hands; and the Well-Tempered Clavier, a prelude and fugue in every key. Pianists still learn from them today.
Bach in Octotune
- Dances from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach (1725), the family's book of music to play at home. Many of its little pieces are by other composers or anonymous, but they are listed under Bach, as they usually are. See the Notebook's minuets; the famous Minuet in G has its own page, under Christian Petzold.
- A Little Prelude from the book he wrote for his son.
- Four Inventions, Nos. 1, 4, 8 and 13.
- The Prelude and Fugue in C major that open the Well-Tempered Clavier.
They are listed below, easiest first.
The pieces, easiest first
- Minuet in A minor, BWV Anh. 120
- Minuet in F major, BWV Anh. 113
- Minuet in G major, BWV Anh. 116
- Little Prelude in C, BWV 924
- March in E-flat major, BWV Anh. 127
- Minuet in G minor, BWV Anh. 115
- Prelude in C major, BWV 846
- Fugue in C (Well-Tempered Clavier I), BWV 846
- Invention No. 1 in C major, BWV 772
- Invention No. 13 in A minor, BWV 784
- Invention No. 4 in D minor, BWV 775
- Invention No. 8 in F, BWV 779
- Musette in D major, BWV Anh. 126