A Minuet, sometimes spelled "Menuet" or "Menuett", is a social dance of french origin for 2 persons, usually in 3/4 time. The name was adapted under the influence of the Italian Minuetto, from the French Menuet, meaning small pretty, delicate, a diminutive of menu, from the latin minutus. Menuetto is a word that occurs only on musical scores.
The name refers probably to the short steps, pas menus, taken in the dance. At the period when it was most fashionable it was slow, ceremonious, and graceful. Stylistically refined Minuets, apart from the social dance context, were introduced to opera at first by Jean-Baptiste Lully, and in the late 17th century, the Minuet was adopted into the suite, such as some of the suites of Johann S. Bach and Georg F. Händel. As the other dances that made up a Baroque suite dropped out of use, the Minuet retained its popularity.
Among Italian composers, the Minuet was often considerably quicker and livelier, was sometimes written in 3/8 or 6/8 time and was often used as the final movement in an Italian overture. It was initially in binary form, with 2 sections of usually 8 bars each, but the second section eventually expanded, resulting in a kind of ternary form. Around Lully's time, it became a common practice to score this section for a trio (such as two Oboes and a Bassoon, as is common in Lully). As a result, this middle section came to be called "Trio", even when no trace of such an orchestration remains. The Minuet and Trio eventually became the standard 3rd movement in the 4-movement classical symphony, Johann Stamitz being the first to employ it thus with regularity. A livelier form of the Minuet later developed into the Scherzo (which was generally also coupled with a Trio). This term came into existence approximately from Beethoven onwards, but the form itself can be traced back to Haydn. The Minuet also remained in some countries as elements in folk dance, such as in Finland and parts of Sweden. It was also a stately court dance of the 17th and 18th centuries. Following the first presidential election in the United States of America on April 30th, 1789, the newly elected President George Washington  The Minuet step is the dance step performed in the dance Minuet. It is composed of 4 plain straight steps or walks, and may be performed forwards, backwards, sideways, or 4 different ways to which there are the like number of names annexed, to distinguish them from one another, arriving, not improperly speaking, from the placing of the marks upon them. 
Play Luigi Boccherini's MinuetFor example, a movement, or sink and rise being added to the first step of the 3 belonging to the Minuet step, produces a Bouree; and the like to the 4th and last a Half Coupee, which together compose what is commonly called the "English Minuet Step". |
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