Minuet
A graceful triple-time court dance, often a sonata's third movement
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A minuet is a graceful triple-time court dance, popular in French and European courts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It often serves as the third movement of a sonata, symphony or quartet — moderate in speed, symmetrical in phrasing, clear in accent.
It differs from the scherzo: the minuet values decorum and restraint, the scherzo deliberately breaks them; it differs from the waltz too: its steps are smaller and more formal. The usual mistake is to think all triple time is alike — the minuet's accent and phrasing and the waltz's turning feel are two different bodies.
Read deeper → scherzo
Sources
- 小步舞曲的宫廷来源与曲式位置，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Minuet"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.