![]() For example, French composer Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-87) wrote minuets that alternated a full string orchestra with a smaller “Trio” of two oboes and a bassoon, as in the excerpt below from his 1670 score to the comédie-ballet Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.Īn alternate minuet for oboes (haubois) and bassoon from Lully’s score to Molière’s comédie-ballet Le Bourgeois gentilhomme ![]() Composers began to write alternate sections to go between duplications of the main minuet music, providing listeners with some variety of melody and timbre while increasing the length of the composition to fit the dance. As a result, the music that accompanied minuets was extremely repetitive. The minuet was a long dance, both in terms of the number of steps it included, and because it could sometimes take well over 100 measures for the ending of the dance pattern to coincide with the end of an appropriate musical section. In the diagram below from French dancing master Pierre Rameau’s manual Le maître à danser, the court observes as a couple advances (3 & 4) and bows to the King (1 & 2) before starting their dance:Ī minuet at the King’s great Ball: engraving from Pierre Rameau’s Le maître à danser ![]() This stately, aristocratic dance in 3/4 time featured individual couples completing step patterns of 12 measures while the rest of the party looked on. The story behind trio sections begins with the history of the minuet, a popular dance form that came into fashion in France in the 17th century. So where does this (instrumentally misleading) label come from? We take for granted the fact the corresponding section in the music rarely features three instruments. ![]() The word “Trio” appears on concert programs all the time, usually attached to a minuet or scherzo movement in a symphony or a piece of chamber music. ![]()
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