![]() ![]() (5) Under the direction of instructor Shirley Agate-Proust from the Alberta Ballet School of Dance, a group of dancers in period costumes will recreate baroque dances including a minuet and a gavotte. (4) Its tempo is a little faster than a minuet, which Bach indicated by 3/8 instead of the standard minuet meter of 3 / 4. ![]() (3) This pair of movements was sometimes followed by a moderately slow dance movement (as in the minuet in Handel's overture to Samson), or the entire first section might be repeated. (2) As ever, I wanted some tunes to take away, apart from bits of airs (with a minuet as a slight leitmotiv) of contemporary style. Life is better with great music in it.(1) She essentially turns the movement into both minuet and gigue and metamorphs one to the other without any sense of break at all. After World War One, in a spirit of ironic reminiscence the arch‑serialist Schoenberg used minuets in his Op 24 Serenade and Op 25 Suite. A nostalgia for the French ‘golden age’ of Couperin and Rameau underpinned the minuet’s revival by Fauré, Debussy and Ravel. Ditto Brahms in his A minor String Quartet. When Beethoven (in his Eighth Symphony and Third Razumovsky Quartet) or Schubert (in his Octet and Rosamunde Quartet) wrote a true minuet, the effect is nostalgic or gently ironic. It’s an unbridled scherzo, setting the blueprint for the 19th century. The minuet in the 19th centuryīeethoven’s menuetto marking in his First Symphony fools no one. Elsewhere in late Haydn, minuets become bucolic scherzos that leave their courtly French model gasping. Canonic writing was a particular feature of minor-keyed minuets, as in Mozart’s Symphony No 40 or the abrasive ‘witches’ minuet’ of Haydn’s Quartet Op 76 No 2. Anyone trying to dance the metrically skewed minuets in Haydn’s Quartet Op 20 No 4, or Mozart’s K387, would risk ending up in A&E. In Haydn’s C sharp minor Sonata, No 36, and Mozart’s Violin Sonata K304 the melancholy minuet finales double as surrogate slow movements.įrom the 1770s most composers favoured the faster Italian form of the dance, often roughing it up in the process. Many JC Bach symphonies and several early Mozart concertos end with a gracious minuet. The Lutheran cantor is at his most decorously Gallic in the menuets of the First Brandenburg Concerto and the B minor Flute Suite.Īlone among Baroque dances, the minuet survived into the age of Haydn and Mozart. Bach, who could rarely resist contrapuntal elaboration in his minuets, used both types. Handel adopted the faster, Italian-type minuet in his G major harpsichord suite. ![]() Meanwhile it had become an optional ingredient in French and German keyboard suites. South of the Alps, in the hands of Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti, the minuet tended to be faster and lustier. In the next century, one or more minuets, often of a wistful cast, were de rigueur in the operas of Rameau. Its graceful rhythms and symmetrical phrases underlie some of Purcell’s most haunting songs, as in ‘Fairest Isle’ from King Arthur. Like all things French, the minuet soon crossed boundaries. Lully further popularised the minuet in his ballets and operas. At balls couples were assessed by the assembled company as they moved through a series of choreographed steps. Its name may derive from the French ‘menu’ (‘slender’), denoting the small, neat steps of the dance.īy the 1660s the minuet was a must-have social skill at the court of Louis XIV. The origins of the minuet – a stately dance in triple time – are blurred. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |