Minuet

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Minuet

A minuet, sometimes spelled menuet, is a social dance

Social dance

File:Il Ballo2.jpgSocial dance is a major category or classification of danceforms or dance styles, where sociability and socializing are the primary focuses of the dancing....
of French

France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
origin for two persons, usually in 3/4 time

Time signature

The time signature is a notational convention used in Western culture musical notation to specify how many beat s are in each bar and what note value constitutes one beat....
. The word was adapted from Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance languages spoken by about 63 million people as a first language, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four Linguistic geography of Switzerlands....
minuetto and French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
menuet, meaning small, pretty, delicate, a diminutive of menu, from the Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
minutus; menuetto is a word that occurs only on musical scores. The name may refer to the short steps, pas menus, taken in the dance, or else be derived from the branle à mener or amener, popular group dances in early 17th-century France (Little 2001).

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Encyclopedia

A minuet, sometimes spelled menuet, is a social dance

Social dance

File:Il Ballo2.jpgSocial dance is a major category or classification of danceforms or dance styles, where sociability and socializing are the primary focuses of the dancing....
of French

France

Time signature

Italian language

French language

Latin

Rhythm

Rhythm is the variation of the length and accentuation of a series of sounds or other events....
, but when not accompanying an actual dance the pace was quicker. Stylistically refined minuets, apart from the social dance context, were introduced — to opera

Opera

Opera is an Performing arts in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work which combines a text and a musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition....
at first — by Jean-Baptiste Lully

Jean-Baptiste Lully

Jean-Baptiste de Lully , was French composer of Italian birth, who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He became a French citizenship in 1661....
, and in the late 17th century the minuet was adopted into the suite

Suite

In music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet, or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements ....
, such as some of the suites of Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and organ whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque music period and brought it to its ultimate maturity....
and George Frideric Händel. As the other dances that made up a Baroque

Baroque

In the the arts, the Baroque was a Western cultural Epoch , starting roughly at the beginning of the 17th century in Rome, Italy. It was exemplified by drama and grandeur in Baroque sculpture, Baroque painting, literature, Baroque dance, and Baroque music....
suite dropped out of use, the minuet retained its popularity. Among Italian composers, the minuet was often considerably quicker and livelier, and was sometimes written in 3/8 or 6/8 time. A minuet was often used as the final movement in an Italian overture

Italian overture

The Italian overture is a piece of orchestral music with which in the late 17th and early 18th centiry several operas, oratorios and other large-scale works opened....
. Initially, before its adoption in contexts other than social dance, the minuet was usually in binary form

Binary form

Binary form is a way of structuring a piece of music in two related sections, both of which are usually repeated. Binary is also a structure used to choreograph dance....
, with two sections of usually eight bars

Bar (music)

In musical notation, a bar is a segment of time defined as a given number of beat of a given duration. The word measure is heard more frequently in the United States, while bar is used in other English-speaking countries, although musicians generally understand both usages....
each, but the second section eventually expanded, resulting in a kind of ternary form

Ternary form

Ternary form is a structuring mechanism of a piece of music. Along with several other musical forms, ternary form can also be applied to dance choreography....
. On a larger scale, two such minuets were often combined, so that the first minuet was followed by a second one, and finally by a repetition of the first. The second (or middle) minuet usually provided some form of contrast, by means of different key and orchestration. Around Lully's time, it became a common practice to score this section for a trio

Trio (music)

Trio is generally used in any of the following ways:*Three musicians playing the same or different musical instrument.*The performance of a song by three people....
(such as two oboe

Oboe

The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois", "hoboy", or "French hoboy"....
s and a bassoon

Bassoon

The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the Bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher....
, as is common in Lully). As a result, this middle section came to be called trio, even when no trace of such an orchestration remains.

The minuet and trio eventually became the standard third movement in the four-movement classical symphony

Symphony

A symphony is a musical composition, often extended and usually for orchestra. "Symphony" does not imply a specific form. Many symphonies are tonality works in four movement with the first in sonata form, and this is often described by music theorists as the structure of a "Classical period " symphony, although even some symphonies by the ac...
, Johann Stamitz

Johann Stamitz

File:Stamic348.jpgJan V?clav Anton?n Stamic...
being the first to employ it thus with regularity. A livelier form of the minuet later developed into the scherzo

Scherzo

A scherzo is a piece of music or a movement, in a certain style, that forms part of a larger piece such as a symphony. The word "scherzo" means "joke" in Italian language....
(which was generally also coupled with a trio). This term came into existence approximately from Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. He was a crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical music era and Romantic music eras in classical music, and remains one of the most acclaimed and influential composers of all time....
onwards, but the form itself can be traced back to Haydn

Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn was an Austrians composer. He was one of the most prominent composers of the classical music era, and is called by some the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet"....
. An example of the true form of the minuet is to be found in Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with Italian language libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered in the Estates Theatre in Prague on October 29, 1787 in music....
.

The minuet also remained in some countries as elements in folk dance

Folk dance

File:Mugham Festival 2008.jpgFolk dance is a term used to describe a large number of dances, mostly of European origin, that tend to share the following attributes:...
, such as in Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland , is a Nordic countries situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland....
and parts of Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic countries on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden has land borders with Norway to the west and Finland to the northeast, and it is connected to Denmark by the ?resund Bridge in the south....
.

Minuet

See also