Noctave
The piece
This anonymous A minor minuet opens like a small canon: the left hand repeats the right hand's phrase one bar later, an octave lower. Then the bass settles and steps down by half steps from A to D, repeating each note three times. The second part restarts the imitation in C major before returning to A minor.
Ten trills decorate the score, nearly all on dotted notes and in both hands, each with a written-out ending in short values. Start each trill on the upper note, following the usual Baroque practice, and stop in time for the ending to land squarely on the next beat. In the canon, the two hands play the same phrase a bar apart: practise them separately first, then together, hearing the left hand's entry as an answer. In each hand, the dotted eighth and sixteenth of the first phrase should stay crisp. During the chromatic descent, keep the three repeated quarter notes even and light.