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4 | Music In The Classical Era

Minuet and Trio

Peter Kun Frary

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A minuet is a stately ballroom dance for two people in triple meter. It is of French origin and was popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Minuet also describes the musical style that accompanies the dance.

Scène de carnaval, ou Le Menuet | Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, 1727-1804 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Scène de carnaval, ou Le Menuet

The early Baroque minuet was a simple binary form (A A B B), i.e., two-part form, and often used in dance suites. The gently driving triple meter and regular phrase structure hint at its social dance origins. Let's listen to a famous minuet from the early eighteenth century.

Minuet in G Major | Christian Petzold, 1677-1733, but sometimes attributed to J.S. Bach | Peter Kun Frary, 'ukulele

Minuet and Trio

Eventually the humble Baroque minuet evolved into a longer and more stylized form called minuet and trio. The minuet and trio was cast in ternary (A B A) form and used only for listening, drifting away from its dance origins. A typical minuet and trio form may be diagrammed thus:

Minuet	Trio	Minuet
A	B	A
a a ba' ba'	c c dc' dc'	a ba'

Note that the outer sections (minuet) are the same but the final minuet section omits the repeated sections. Modulation or mode changes are sometimes used in the trio section for contrast and tension. The minuet and trio is often used as a movement in symphonies, chamber music and solo sonatas.

A Minuet (1824) | Sir George Hayter, 1792–1871 | Yale Center for British Art

Minuet dancers

Eine kleine Nachmusik

The third movement of Mozart's Eine kleine Nachmusik, K. 525, scored for string orchestra, is a wonderful example of the minuet and trio. Here's the melody from the beginning of the Minuet (A section). Listen carefully and you'll hear it return after the Trio (B section).

A Section Melody | Mozart's Eine kleine Nachmusik, K. 525, Minuet

A Section Melody

And the melody at the beginning of the Trio (B section):

B Section Melody | Mozart's Eine kleine Nachmusik, K. 525, Minuet & Trio

B Section Melody

Eine kleine Nachmusik, K. 525 | III: Minuet & Trio | Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (2:30)

Vocabulary

minuet, minuet and trio

Preface	Elements	Medieval	Renaissance
Baroque	Classical	Romantic	Modern