Air in B-flat major (Aylesford Pieces)

Background

In Handel's time an air was a song-like piece: a melody you could imagine being sung, even when it was written for an instrument. The best-known example in Handel's keyboard music is the Air with variations that ends his Suite in E major, from the harpsichord suites he published in London in 1720; its nickname, "The Harmonious Blacksmith", was attached later and did not come from Handel.

This Air in B-flat major is a much smaller piece. Like the Menuet in D major, it is one of the Aylesford Pieces, short works that survive in manuscript copies once owned by the Earls of Aylesford and first printed in the twentieth century. The version here follows a Schott edition of around 1930, which marks it Allegretto: moderately lively. Its date is unknown.

What makes it charming is the way the two hands imitate each other. The right hand plays a little curl of notes falling from the top of the tune, and one bar later the left hand answers with the same shape, two octaves lower: a tiny conversation, of the kind Baroque composers loved.

How to practise it

The Air is in 3/8: three eighth notes to the bar, felt as one quick beat. The library version writes out the repeats, so the 56 bars are a first half of 12 bars played twice (bars 1 to 24) and a second half of 16 bars played twice (bars 25 to 56).

Learn the curl first. One fingering that works every time it appears is 4-3-2-1 going down, then finger 3 crossing over the thumb for the last note.

Play it slowly and evenly, then in rhythms (long-short, short-long) until the sixteenths ripple without a bump at the crossing. Bar 3 is the same shape starting on F, with the same fingers.

Now the answer:

Because each hand curls while the other holds a longer note, playing hands together is mostly about handing the music cleanly from one hand to the other. Play bars 1 to 4 very slowly and listen: the curls should sound like one voice echoing another.

The second half begins in F major and soon turns to G minor, with F sharps in the right hand (from bar 29), before longer runs of six sixteenths bring it home to B-flat. Learn it in four-bar pieces.

Set the metronome to click once per bar (the dotted-quarter beat): 28, 36, 42, then the full 48, which the app shows as 72 quarter notes a minute.

Listen for lightness. Let the first note of each curl ring a little and the rest fade, keep the left hand's answers as clear as the right hand's, and play the quarter notes gently detached so the music dances rather than drags.

Slow practice in short sections, as used here, is explained in how to practise piano.