4 | Minuet Form (Classical Dance Form)

Stylized dances — music in the style and form of dances, but intended for listening rather than dancing — reached a state of high development in the Baroque era. In Chapter 10 we saw how various dance types were assembled into suites. Unlike the Baroque era, which developed a single genre made up of different dances, the Classical era focused on a single stylized dance and introduced it into many different genres.

The sole dance type from the Baroque suite to survive in the multimovement genres of the Classical period was the minuet. One reason for its endurance was simply the dance itself: Originally popularized at the court of Louis XIV in the seventeenth century, it continued as one of the major fashionable social dances in the eighteenth. However much the minuet movement of a symphony differed from a simple dance tune, it was always a reminder of the aristocratic courts that had originally established orchestras.

Another reason was more technical. As a moderately paced piece in triple meter, the minuet makes an excellent contrast to the quick duple meter that was by far the most common meter in the opening and closing movements of Classical symphonies, quartets, and the like.

Works with four movements — symphonies and string quartets — always included a minuet, usually as a light contrast after the slow movement. Mozart even managed to fit a minuet into some of his piano concertos, though traditionally the concerto, as a three-movement genre, did not leave room for one.