Minuet

A stately dance in triple meter, usually in moderate tempo, that became a standard movement in eighteenth-century instrumental works.

Triple meter: A meter organized around recurring groups of three beats. The minuet’s characteristic pulse groups beats in threes.
Minuet and trio: A musical structure pairing a minuet with a contrasting middle section called a trio, followed by the minuet’s return. This expanded design became the minuet’s standard instrumental layout.
Jean-Baptiste Lully: A French Baroque composer who shaped court music under Louis XIV. Lully helped establish the minuet in French court entertainments and stage works.
Baroque dance suite: An instrumental collection of stylized dances, often sharing a key and organized as a sequence. The minuet could appear among the dances in a Baroque suite.
Scherzo: A lively musical movement, often in triple meter, that replaced the minuet in many nineteenth-century symphonies and sonatas. The scherzo retained the movement’s broad placement while replacing its courtly restraint with greater speed and force.
Dance music: Music composed or adapted to accompany dancing. The minuet’s musical phrasing grew from movements made for dancers.
Musical phrase: A short, coherent musical idea comparable to a sentence in language. Regular phrase lengths help make minuet melodies easy to follow and dance to.
Louis XIV: King of France from 1643 to 1715, whose court at Versailles became a center of European culture. The minuet’s courtly prestige grew within the ceremonial world of Versailles.
Symphony: An extended orchestral composition, usually organized into several contrasting movements. Eighteenth-century symphonies often used a minuet as a middle movement.
Waltz: A partnered dance in triple meter characterized by turning movement and a strong first beat. The waltz shares triple meter but favors continuous turning over the minuet’s measured steps.

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