Waltz
A triple-time dance — one beat lands, two turn
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A waltz is a dance in triple time: one beat lands, the next two turn. It grew from German-Austrian folk dances in the late eighteenth century and became both a social dance and a concert genre in nineteenth-century Vienna, where the Strauss family turned it into an industry.
The point is not "three beats" but the weight of the first beat and the lightness of the next two: the accompaniment is often bass–chord–chord, and the melody delays its landing. The usual mistake is to play a waltz as three even beats — without the gravity of beat one, the turn falls apart.
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Sources
- 圆舞曲的起源、三拍子与维也纳传统，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Waltz"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.