(Fr. menuet; Ger. Menuett; It. minuetto; Sp. minuete, minué).
A French dance. In a moderate or slow triple metre, it was one of the most popular social dances in aristocratic society from the mid-17th century to the late 18th. It was used as an optional movement in Baroque suites, and frequently appeared in movements of late 18th-century multi-movement forms such as the sonata, the string quartet, and the symphony, where it was usually paired with a Trio (see also Scherzo).
2. Minuets in Baroque instrumental music.
3. Classical and neo-classical minuets.
MEREDITH ELLIS LITTLE
Though the origin of the minuet is unknown, it was danced in the court of Louis XIV at least by the 1660s. Praetorius (Terpsichore, 1612) is now thought to have erred in claiming it to be a descendant of the branle de Poitou, a claim that was nonetheless repeated over a century later by Pierre Rameau (Le maître à danser, 1725), with the addition of the plausible detail that Pierre Beauchamp, Louis XIV’s dancing-master, had effected the transformation. There is virtually no point of resemblance between the two dances; some of the minuets included in the Philidor Collection consist of the three-bar phrases characteristic of the Branle, however, so the theory cannot be entirely discounted. The name ‘menuet’ may have derived from the French ‘menu’ (slender, small), referring to the extremely small steps of the dance, or from the branle à mener or amener, which, like the branle de Poitou, were popular group dances in early 17th-century France.
As an aristocratic social dance the minuet was dignified, graceful, relaxed and unaffected, unlike some modern re-creations in which exaggerated postures are used. The attention of both dancers and spectators was directed to the elegant and seemingly effortless performance of minuet step-units, each consisting of four tiny steps in 6/4 time set in counter rhythm to two bars of music in 3/4, and, secondarily, to the movement of the dancers in prescribed floor patterns. The earliest extant choreographies using minuet steps are from the 1680s. André Lorin presented a manuscript collection of longways country dances to Louis XIV in about 1685, with indications of minuet steps. Recent research has pieced together the performance of Le mariage de la grosse Cathos in which a choreographed minuet and other social dances form parts of a comic Mascarade presented at Versailles in 1688 (Harris-Warrick and Marsch, 1994). Specific information on the actual steps and movements began to be available in 1700, when the publication of the Beaucham-Feuillet system of dance notation (see Beauchamps, Pierre, and Feuillet, Raoul-Auger) made it possible to record dance steps in their proper relationship to the accompanying music. At least 45 early 18th-century choreographies or sections of choreographies survive (listed in Little and Marsh, 1992). These are primarily social dances by French and English choreographers (e.g. Isaac’s ‘The Britannia’, 1706, and Pécour’s ‘Le menuet d’Alcide’, 1709), though a few dances are designated for theatrical performance (e.g. Pécour’s ‘Menuet à deux pour un homme et une femme, dancé par Mr. du Moulin l’Ainé et Mlle. Victoire au ballet des fragments de Mr. de Lully’, 1704, and Anthony L’abbé’s ‘Menuet performed by Mrs. Santlow’, c1725).
Two treatises by Pierre Rameau (Paris, 1725) supply additional information on social dance practices at the French court. According to Rameau, each formal ball conformed to a pre-arranged ritual establishing the seating arrangement in the salon and indicating when, how and by whom each dance would be performed. Ordinarily the minuet was danced by one couple at a time while the rest of the company watched and appraised their accomplishments (fig.1; see also Dance, §4(ii), fig.12). After making honours to the Présence (the king or someone else designated to preside for the evening) and to each other, the dancers moved through a series of prescribed step patterns to diagonally opposite sides of a rectangular area. From there they moved, again in the typical minuet step patterns, along an imaginary letter Z (fig.2) so that they passed each other in the middle and finished the figure in opposite positions (before 1700 the figure of the floor pattern was a letter S, the sign for the Sun King, Louis XIV). After several Z figurations, the dancers presented their right hands to each other in the middle of the rectangle and turned a full circle before retreating to diagonally opposite corners. Then they advanced again for a similar presentation of left hands, followed by more letter Z figurations. The climax of the dance was the presentation of both hands, during which the dancers turned several circles before retreating together to make honours to each other and to the Présence (fig.3).
The four small steps of a minuet step-unit always began on the right foot. A number of different step-units were used, all but a few ornamental ones made up of combinations of demi-coupés (rises from previous bends during the transfer of weight from foot to foot), demi-jettés (small leaps from one foot to the other) and pas marchés (plain steps on to the ball of the foot), all steps that end with the dancer’s weight on the ball of the foot. Most step patterns can be taken in any direction, and all four-step complexes are tiny, covering a distance of about a metre. Two of the most popular patterns were the pas de menuet à deux mouvements, consisting of two demi-coupés and two pas marchés with the steps falling on the first, third, fourth and fifth crotchets of a two-bar unit (Table 1) and the pas de menuet à trois mouvements. The latter, more difficult to execute, consists of two demi-coupés, a pas marché and either another demi-coupé or a demi-jetté, with steps falling on the first, third, fourth and sixth crotchets of a unit. Gentle accents in the music accompanying the dance are always implied by the demi-coupé and the demi-jetté, but the music and dance often form counter-rhythms to each other. Thus, musicians accompanying dancers or playing stylized minuets should realize that the basic unit of the dance is two bars long (not one or four), and that while the dancers’ movements always imply an accent on the first beat of a unit, strong secondary accents would not necessarily fall on the second downbeat. Further, the letter Z floor design ordinarily took six step patterns to execute, thus best fitting a musical strain 12 bars long. Although many of the minuets in Lully’s ballets, for example, have such strains, most minuets are made of strains eight or 16 bars long, suggesting that a frequent lack of coincidence between music and dance was enjoyed. The tension was presumably resolved by the end of the 100 to 200 bars usually required for a complete minuet performance.
One reason for the minuet’s remarkable longevity as a social dance may have been the considerable variety of steps it could absorb into the basic pattern. The ‘minuet hop’ or contretemps, the balancé, the tems de courante and the fleuret were among the most common interpolated steps in France (see treatises by Rameau and Feuillet). gottfried Taubert, writing in 1717, described four step patterns for the minuet, in different relationships to music and in eight different rhythmic-metrical configurations. Dufort, writing in Italian in 1728, mentioned three possible step patterns with other relationships to the accompanying music. In 1767 C.J. von Felsenstein described a pattern with accents on the first, fourth, fifth and sixth beats (see Table 1). The French minuet apparently formed a point of departure for varied practices in different countries and social settings. Minuet steps were adopted into the Contredanse, for example, creating a set of dances for two or four couples using repetitive step patterns and a variety of floor designs. Later in the 18th century steps from other triple-metre dances such as the waltz, ländler and polonaise were introduced into the minuet or juxtaposed with it in the same piece. J.S. Bach may have been reflecting this practice in his Brandenburg Concerto no.1, in which the rondeau-form minuet movement has a polonaise section. In Spain and Portugal, where the minuet was a popular court dance, native dance styles infiltrated, as in the ‘minuet afandangado’ (see Minguet e Yrol, 1758, and Hatchette, 1971).
Early examples of minuets apparently intended to accompany dancing survive in the Kassel Manuscript (c1660, ed. J. Ecorcheville, Vingt suites d’orchestre, Paris, 1906/R) and in the Philidor Collection. The two minuets in the Kassel Manuscript both consist of two unrelated strains, each eight bars long; those in the Philidor Collection consist of phrases three bars long, resembling the characteristic phrases of the branle à mener and suggesting an elegant cross-rhythm of music and dance resolved at the end of the strain. Many printed and manuscript collections of music to accompany dancing remain unedited (particularly rich holdings exist in France and England), and study of these sources may shed light on the early development of the minuet as a musical form. The earliest significant corpus of minuets comes from the theatrical works of Lully: 92 titled minuets appear in his ballets and operas from 1664 to 1687, and several of his overtures include minuet movements (e.g. Armide), presumably not intended to accompany the dance. The ‘Menuet pour les faunes et les dryades’ from Les amants magnifiques (Oeuvres complètes, ix/3, p.200) is cast in two strains, each 12 bars long and, therefore, each perfectly tailored to accompany the execution of one Z floor pattern. Not all Lully’s minuets conform so strictly to the phrases of the dance, however: the fifth entrée of his Ballet des nations (Oeuvres complètes, ix/3, p.142, ‘Les français’), including two instrumental minuets separated by a vocal reprise of the first, consists of two-, four- and ten-bar phrases, thus creating some tension between music and dance. Significantly, the entire entrée is 124 bars long when the indicated repeats are taken, almost exactly the prescribed length for a complete minuet performance. Ex.1, from the ‘Menuet des Thébains’ (Entr’actes d’Oedipe, 1664), shows a five-bar minuet strain, which, though unorthodox, would not necessarily preclude social dancing, since with the repeat an even number of bars would result. It should be remembered that theatrical dancing in general was more elaborate and virtuoso than contemporary social dancing, permitting and even encouraging considerable freedom in the accompanying musical structures.
Like most 17th-century dances, the minuet was included in French keyboard and ensemble suites, usually (along with other still-popular dances like the bourrée and gavotte) appearing after the sarabande, and many composers included minuets among their independent keyboard pieces (e.g. Chambonnières, Lebègue, Louis Marchand and Bach in the minuets in the Clavierbüchlein for Anna Magdalena). In addition, many minuets were included in manuscript collections of music for guitar and lute, and minuet-like movements (usually without the dance title), occurred in collections of organ music (e.g. by G.G. Nivers, Gilles Jullien and Nicolas de Grigny) and were incorporated into songs (see Brunette). Usually, the minuet received a rather straightforward treatment, with its characteristic clarity of rhythm and phrase preserved. Even the occasional double (see Double (i)) of a minuet was likely to be free from the complex texture and rhythmic ambiguities that otherwise fascinated instrumental composers of the French Baroque period, probably because the minuet was still a familiar social dance. Some composers experimented with irregular phrase structure: Louis Marchand’s second minuet in the collection Pièces de clavecin (1702) consists of a ten-bar strain divided into five-bar phrases: at least one of Louis Couperin’s minuets retains the three-bar phrase structure of the minuets in the Philidor Collection.
The minuet was a popular social dance in 17th-century England, where it also appeared in stylized forms (see the keyboard pieces in The Second Part of Musick’s Hand-Maid, published by Playford, 1689) and in music for the theatre. Purcell set minuets more often than any other dance in his stage works and incidental music, including movements marked ‘minuet’ or ‘tempo di minuetto’ in the overtures to The Old Bachelor (1693) and Bonduca, or The British Heroine (1695); his minuets, like those of his French contemporaries, are in binary form, usually consisting of no more than two eight-bar strains. German composers of the Louis XIV era, such as Georg Muffat, Pachelbel and J.C.F. Fischer, also wrote minuets in the French style, adding more contrapuntal and motivic interest than the French while retaining the clear phrasing and unambiguous rhythms of the original dance. J.S. Bach’s 28 titled minuets occur in his keyboard partitas and suites, in chamber music for solo and accompanied violin, cello or flute, in three of the four orchestral suites, and in the Brandenburg Concerto no.1 (Little and Jenne, 1991). Bach also liberally used minuet dance rhythms in his vocal works (e.g. in the cantatas bwv1, ‘Unser Mund und Ton der Saiten’, bwv93, ‘Man halte nur ein wenig stille’, bwv6, ‘Hochgelobter Gottessohn’; and in the Magnificat in D bwv243, ‘Et exultavit spiritus meus’). Though the time signature in these pieces is 3/8 not 3/4, the overall form is that of da capo aria and frequent virtuosity appears, the essential minuet characteristics are still present: triple metre in moderate tempo; moderate affect which is intimate and nonchalant or that of simple joy or peace; balanced four-plus-four-bar phrase structure with extensions; and uncomplicated harmonies.
As with other Baroque dance forms such as the allemande, courante and gigue, Italian minuet style differed from the mainstream of European taste in a preference for faster tempos, implied by the prevalent use of 3/8 or 6/8 as the ordinary time signature. Melodic movement in the Italian minuet was carried over a longer phrase than in the French dance (usually eight bars rather than two or four), and more use was made of both melodic and harmonic sequence to sustain a clear sense of direction. Examples of the Italian-style minuet may be found in the chamber works of Corelli, in some of the opera overtures of Alessandro Scarlatti and Handel (ex.2), in some of Handel’s keyboard suites, in the music of some of Handel’s contemporaries, notably William Boyce, in French composers such as François Couperin, Rameau, Boismortier, Hotteterre and J.-M. Leclair l’aîné, and in works by Telemann and J.S. Bach. Michel L’Affilard, in his valuable treatise Principes très-faciles pour bien apprendre la musique (Paris, 1694), gave two examples of minuet songs, one with the mensuration 3, the other in 6/8 and a faster tempo, indicating that there was some variety in minuet tempos, even among French composers. Much has been written about the tempo of the minuet, both in the 18th century and in modern times. The large number of conflicting treatises and studies suggests that there was no fixed tempo for this dance over the centuries, but considerable variety in the different courts and cities in which the minuet was performed (see Malloch, 1993).
Minuets in various styles remained among the most popular dance forms of aristocratic Europe throughout the 18th century, exerting a continuing influence on stylized dance music. The restrained yet complex elegance of the dance itself appealed to the requirements of the developing aesthetic of the Rococo period, and the relative simplicity of its phrases and harmonic movement made it an admirable vehicle for experiments with large structures based on contrasting harmonic and tonal plateaux, while permitting the introduction of other triple-metre styles and learned contrapuntal devices.
The minuet was probably first included in symphonies by Italian composers in the early 18th century, as movements labelled ‘tempo di minuetto’ often closed opera overtures which, like that to Domenico Scarlatti’s Narciso, for example, were sometimes later published independently as ‘sinfonias’ (London, 1720). Scarlatti’s minuet movement, typical of its time and in the binary form typical of late Baroque dance movements, consists of two eight-bar strains based on a single rhythmic motif; many of Sammartini’s symphonies end with similar minuet movements, as do the symphonies of C.F. Abel, Johann Stamitz and M.G. Monn and some of the early keyboard sonatas of Haydn.
Rather
different minuet finales became fairly frequent in the symphonies, concertos
and sonatas of English-influenced composers during the third quarter of the
18th century. These movements, generally headed with the rubric ‘tempo di
minuetto’ or the hybrid Italian-German word ‘menuetto’, often applied some of
the principles of so-called Sonata form to a movement having the characteristic
metre, tempo and phrasing of the minuet. The third movement of Thomas Arne’s
Symphony no.3 in E
(1767, ed. in MC, iii, London, 1973), for example, marked ‘tempo di minuetto’, has
an opening section presenting two distinct themes in contrasting keys; after
repetition of that section, a brief development combines motivic transformation
of the opening theme with a series of rapid modulations, followed by a full
recapitulation of the opening without the change of key. J.C. Bach’s Sinfonia
concertante in E (c1775,
ed. J.A. White, The Concerted Symphonies, Tallahassee, FL, 1963)
includes a slightly more complex minuet finale: the sonata-like minuet section
(the first modulation to the dominant occurs after the double bar, followed by
intense motivic development of the first section’s theme, a long dominant
pedal, and a full recapitulation) is paired with a short trio in ternary form,
and then repeated da capo. Later and perhaps clearer examples of sonata
principles applied to minuet movements (other than finales) can be found in the
works of both Mozart (e.g. k387, which lacks motivic
development but has a sharply defined contrast of tonality and theme in the
‘exposition’, and k464) and Haydn (piano sonatas hXVI:25 in E, hXVI:35 in C). Minuet finales,
whether or not they use formal procedures derived from the sonata, occur fairly
often in Haydn’s piano sonatas and piano trios and in several of Mozart’s
concertos (e.g. k271 and k482 for
piano, k190/186e for two violins, k191/186e
for bassoon and k313/285c for flute).
Other
formal schemes used for such movements included the rondeau-like alternations
of one minuet with several trios seen in the minuet movement of Bach’s
Brandenburg Concerto no.1, commonly used in divertimentos and serenades (e.g.
Mozart’s Serenade in D k185/167a, the second
minuet, and Haydn’s piano sonatas h XVI:22 in E and h XVI:29 in F), variations of a binary minuet theme (Haydn’s
piano sonatas hXVI:30 in A and hXVI:33
in D), and, most familiarly, the common stereotype of a minuet paired with a
single trio contrasting in key, thematic material, scoring and general mood.
The last form, appearing frequently as the third of four movements in
symphonies and string quartets written after about 1770, typically consisted of
a ternary minuet section (e.g. two 12-bar strains, each repeated) and a shorter
ternary trio, the minuet being repeated da capo with repeats (see Ternary
form). About
mid-century the trio was normally in a closely related key, usually either the
tonic minor or the relative minor of the minuet, but in many of Haydn’s later
string quartets the tonal contrast was made considerably more striking: in
op.77 no.2, for example, the minuet is in F major, the trio in D. Sometimes the characteristically
simple and elegant style of the minuet was infused with elements from more
‘serious’ kinds of music, often with quite dramatic effects. The minuet of
Haydn’s piano sonata h XVI:26 in A, for example, is cast
in the typical minuet and trio form, but, as indicated by its heading ‘menuet
al rovescio’, the second half of each section is an exact retrograde of the
first. Haydn’s Symphony no.44 (‘Trauer’) and String Quartet op.76 no.2 both
include minuet and trio movements that employ strict canon and irregular
phrases to lend an unaccustomed seriousness to the form, as does the use of
both canon and double counterpoint in the minuet of Mozart’s Symphony no.40 (k550).
All the forms applied to minuet movements in Classical symphonies and chamber works probably derived from the actual practice of dance accompaniment. Most surviving functional minuets are quite short, often no more than 16 or 32 bars, and indeed the instructions for composing minuets given by such theorists as Brossard (1703), J.-J. Rousseau (1768) and Honoré Compan (1787) specified that the individual strains of a minuet ought to be only eight or 16 bars long, divided into phrases of two or four bars. Contemporary descriptions of the dance, however, indicate that a complete performance would have taken well over 100 bars. To accompany the long social dance, the musicians would have had to perform several minuets in succession, with repeats, and may also have used improvised embellishments to the successive repetitions of strains, thus creating variation or rondeau forms (see Little, 1987). The minuet and trio stereotype seems to have been the most common such practice to be transferred to stylized music by composers who, for the most part, had contributed many minuets for ballroom use at various times in their careers. As an aristocratic dance, the minuet continued throughout the 18th century to hold its place in opera and ballet as well as in the ballroom and concert hall, especially in France, and several theatrical minuet choreographies have survived. Grétry included a minuet in his Céphale et Procris (1773), as did Gluck in the Paris version of his Orphée (1774), Sacchini in his opera Chimène (1783) and Salieri in his Tarare (1787). Probably the most famous appearance of the minuet on stage, however, was in Mozart’s Don Giovanni (1787), where, in the finale of Act 1, Don Ottavio and Donna Anna dance a noble minuet, while Leporello and Masetto perform the comparatively plebeian German dance and Don Giovanni and Zerlina the middle-class contredanse, a scene in which the simultaneously performed dances portray the juxtaposed cultural values and social standing of the dancers (see Allanbrook, 1983, pp.277–87).
18th-century theorists such as J.P. Kirnberger (Der allezeit fertige Polonoisen- und Menuettencomponist, 1757) used the minuet as an elementary composition exercise, and the process was even reduced to methods used in games of chance such as the throwing of dice: the clear implication is that the melodic and harmonic patterns of the standard eight-bar minuet were so standardized that arbitrary arrangements of them could be made without incongruity (see Ratner, 1970), despite the sophistication that had been brought to the form by some composers. Interestingly enough, minuet movements seldom appeared in Italian symphonies and concertos after the mid-18th century, and, in fact, the standard minuet and trio movement was increasingly often replaced by a similarly structured movement called ‘scherzo’ (It.: ‘joke’). Haydn was apparently the first to substitute movements with this heading for the minuets in his string quartets op.33 (the set is sometimes called ‘Gli scherzi’). It is not clear exactly why Haydn labelled the triple-metre movements thus in op.33, however, for while at least one such movement, the scherzo of no.5, does include several humorous elements such as unpredictable phrasing, some of the other movements are quite serious. Beethoven seems to have preferred the title ‘scherzo’ to ‘minuet’ in most of his works, using it to indicate a more vigorous, robust movement than that implied by the minuet’s associations with elegant court pastimes. He used the minuet, however, in a number of his piano sonatas, including op.2 no.1, op.10 no.3 and op.49 no.2, in the String Quartets op.18 nos.4 and 5, in the Septet op.20, and in Symphonies nos.1 and 8. Twice, in the Violin Sonata in G op.30 no.3 and the Piano Sonata op.31 no.3, a movement entitled ‘tempo di minuetto’ actually takes the place of the slow movement.
19th-century composers were less interested in the minuet, an attitude which may have been influenced by political as well as musical considerations; nonetheless, Schubert (some of his piano works) and Brahms (Serenade op.11, 1857–8) included minuets in a number of their works, and Bizet used the form in his music for L’arlésienne (1872) and in the Symphony in C (1860–68). The courtly minuet was one of the programmatic associations in the symphonic poems of Liszt (see Johns, 1990). Late 19th- and early 20th-century neo-classicism led to a revival of interest in the minuet, evidenced by its appearance in Fauré’s Masques et bergamasques (1919), Chabrier’s ‘Menuet poupeux’ from Pièces pittoresques (1881), Debussy’s Suite bergamasque (1890), Jean Françaix’ Musique de cour (1937), Bartók’s Nine Little Pieces (1926) and the second book of Mikrokosmos, Schoenberg’s Serenade op.24 (1920–23) and Suite for piano op.25 (1921–3) and Ravel’s Sonatine (1903–5), his independent Menuet antique (1895) and Menuet (on ‘Haydn’, 1909).
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