A Level Composition, Minuet and Trio Options

[x-music-fairy-x]

Ok so having a bit of a confusion over the structure and stylistic features.

I thought the structure was for a Minuet and Trio was:

Minuet A B A
Trio A B A
Minuet A1 B1 A1

Is this correct? My teacher wants me to do:

Minuet A B A1
Trio A B C(mixture of A and B)
Minuet A1 B1 A1


Also stylistic features of a trio?

All I know is Ornamentation and Triplets. Also does the Trio have to contain features of the minuet or is it completely self contained?

Thanks for helping x

[x-music-fairy-x]

I've just been looking at my favourite minuet and trio, in Mozart's C minor Serenade for wind octet, K 388. It exemplifies several of the points raised previously. The structure is:

|: A1 :||: B A2 :||: C1 :||: C2 :| DC al Fine (after A2)

A1 is 16 bars long. It starts on an unaccompanied G (the dominant), so the key is indeterminate until bar 3;* the tonic minor is extablished at bar 4 and it takes a further 4 bars to get to the relative major (Eb). The second eight bars remain in the relative major.

B is 12 bars long. It continues in the relative major, but with new material and in a contrasting texture to A1; bar 21 starts a modulation back to the tonic minor at bar 28. A2 returns to the material of A1, but is extended to 20 bars; a new motif at bar 35 takes the harmony into the subdominant, at 39 the tonic minor returns and bars 42 to 48 correspond to bars 10 to 16, but remaining in the minor. A clever trick that unifies B and A2 is that the clarinets have the starting motif of A1 at bar 28, but its true recapitulation is by the oboes at 29.

C1 and C2 differ from A1, A2, and B in several ways: the ensemble is slimmed down to two oboes and two bassoons; the texture is more uniform; the tonality is major throughout; there is only one motif, though one passage is a chromatic variation on a diatonic earlier exposition. C1 moves from C major to G major in 14 bars; C2 returns from G major to C major in 18.

Within this one movement we see both ternary structure in the minuet and binary in the trio, and both compexity and (relative) simplicity. "Relative", because while the minuet is a canon at the double octave between oboes and bassoons, the trio is a double inverse canon: oboe 2 starts and oboe 1 joins in two bars later with the same phrase in a diatonic inversion; after another two bars bassoon 1 has a phrase in the same rhythm but different intervals and two bars later bassoon 2 inverts it. I supect that Mozart was inspired to write this miraculous music by becoming acquainted with J S Bach's "Art of Fugue" and the 48, some of which he was transcribing for string quartet for his friend and patron Baron van Swieten about the time he wrote the Serenade. He seems to have been pleased with his achievement, because he later transcribed it for his favourite medium, the string quintet (K406/516b). If you don't like wind instruments, you could try that.

* Bar numbering corresponds to the new B?renreiter Mozart edition.

Ooo I've listened to this...will go and listen to it again and pick some of this out... I think I will follow this structure as it has to be just over 3 minutes long and with everything in binary it only last 2mins 34sec. Thank you for the descriptive help its made me a lot clearer on what i'm doing =)

I mentioned triplets because apparently they are a feature of a Trio. Is this correct?

No. They may be a feature of one specific trio which you've been studying, but I wouldn't say they're a typical feature at all.

Which makes me wonder if you were meant to be using a particular piece as a model - one in which maybe all those features you mention do appear.

I think my teacher meant it as a general rule for all Trio's. As she keeps asking us random what are the features of a Minuet? Trio?

Is there any specific features of a Trio that you know of? Sorry to ask so many questions and thank you for all your help.

I'm really glad I asked about this on here because there is no way I would know much of this without you lot so thank you everyone it is very much appreciated x

[linda.ff]

I think I will follow this structure as it has to be just over 3 minutes long and with everything in binary it only last 2mins 34sec.

Do it slower? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

I think my teacher meant it as a general rule for all Trio's. As she keeps asking us random what are the features of a Minuet? Trio?

Is there any specific features of a Trio that you know of? Sorry to ask so many questions and thank you for all your help.

I'm really glad I asked about this on here because there is no way I would know much of this without you lot so thank you everyone it is very much appreciated x

Specific features - I presume she means more than just "3 beats in a bar"? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

If you're talking just "any" minuet, there's rather a lot of difference stylistically between a minuet by Handel and one by Beethoven, who was writing somewhat towards the twilight of the minuet - during his own lifetime, there was Schubert writing a lot of waltzes, and Beethoven certainly described the main theme of his Diabelli Variations as a waltz. The main difference between a waltz and a minuet - which might in itself be a feature of the minuet, was that the waltz tended (not invariably, though) to have one harmony per bar, whereas the minuet more commonly changed the harmony twice or even three times in a bar. And above all, the waltz had a heavy first beat to each bar (Boom-cha-cha) which is not a feature of a minuet at all. In the earlier baroque minuet the steps came on beats 1 & 3 in the first bar and on beats 1 & 2 of the second (and so on) but this was often an isolated feature of a couple of bars here and there rather than appearing throughout.

I suppose the style was usually what might be describes as "elegant", having a mixture of short slurred groups and staccato notes - but listen if you can to the opening 8 bars of the minuet in Mozart's 39th symphony - a lot of fun and hardly elegant! however the next 8 bars fit exactly into that description I gave of the phrasing style.

The thing about the trio is that is should be another minuet, but should contrast in style if possible. It was originally for a smaller group of instruments (just a trio from the larger group) and is in a different key; if you look at the music of Bach and Handel you will find that other dances in the suites, particularly gavottes and sarabandes, come in pairs like the minuet, and the second is often markedly different, maybe with a drone like a bagpipe, so called a musette,(though this happens more with gavottes) or has some other very distinctive kind of texture - if you go back to Mozart 39, the trio section sounds, if not quite "vulgar", at least "folky" with the rippling quavers of the clarinets. In fact these pairs of Gavottes, Sarabandes, bourees etc are often described as being in "Minuet and trio" form.

If you transfer this kind of contrast to a keyboard, you might get an Alberti-type bass in the trio or the second half of the minuet; staccato chords in the accompaniment, perhaps, or a very contrasting rhythm in the main melody.

Depending on what period you're looking at, you may also be including a certain amount of melodic ornamentation (trills and twiddles), particularly on repeat section. What you will certainly find, and I'm sure this happens all the way through music history where style and structure is concerned,is that once the structure of minuet and trio had become firmly established, most composers decided to ring the changes and produce all sorts of variants on the basic form.

The one thing I'd take issue with is that the structure of a minuet is, as cited in so many websites, :A: :B-A:

The entire point of the baroque and classical binary form is that the first "half" (often the second section is longer) almost always ends on what's called a half close. This might be a brief modulation to the dominant, or an imperfect cadence - no modulation but ends sitting on the V chord. That's section A. The end of the second half does NOT end on that chord. It finishes back on the tonic. And that's not just an afterthought at the end of an otherwise straight repetition. One of two things happens - either the end section of the first half appears as the end of the second half too, but in the home key this time, or the opening occurs again, but at a crucial point the modulation doesn't happen (or a modulation in the opposite direction happens first so that the original modulation brings it back to home). Sound familiar? It's what happens in classical sonata form. But that last section can't be classified as a repeat of section A.

Probably much more than you wanted to know!