Mozart, 6 Menuets, K. 164

The traditional narrative has the period theme dominating the Classical era (that is, European music roughly 1760-1820) but by the end of that time giving way to the sentence (Schoenberg's term): the preference for symmetry somehow turned to a preference for organic development. By now, we know well that this historical model misrepresents much of the music of this era. It certainly misrepresents music for dance.

My claim is that a variety of thematic types was typical of the 17th century and early 18th, as well, but gradually gave way to the symmetrical design of the period by the 1760s because of the popularity of the contredanse, which was based on music for the gavotte (duple time) and gigue (triple). Through most of the century, however, the menuet was prominent in maintaining one of the earlier theme types, the antecedent-continuation design (one of William Caplin's "hybrids"). The goal of my new research is to gain a better picture of just how thoroughly—and during which decades—this design was important.

Mozart provides a particularly good case study, as he was an avid dancer himself (and therefore knew intimately the requirements and changing fashions of dance), and he was also a prolific composer of music for dancing from an early age into the last year of his life, when he held a position as composer of dance music for the Imperial court.

The six orchestral menuets of K. 164 were composed in 1772. The scoring is for two violin parts and bass, augmented by trumpet and 2 oboes (or, sometimes, a solo flute). The designs for the first strain of each menuet and its trio are listed below.

• n1: sentence
• n1, trio: period 
• n2: sentence 
• n2, trio: sentence
• n3: period
• n3, trio: sentence
• n4: antecedent-continuation
• n4, trio: sentence
• n5: presentation-consequent
• n5, trio: sentence
• n6: sentence
• n6, trio: period

The two striking points are (1) the presence of a presentation-consequent hybrid, which Caplin regarded as too rare to even place among his set of hybrid themes; and (2) the prevalence of sentences: seven out of the twelve themes. So much for the narrative that says the sentence arises with Beethoven. In fact, it would seem to be just common sense that the sentence should be well suited to 18th century motive-driven Italianate models of composition and improvisation.

Here are the stats for K. 568, composed in 1788.

• n1: sentence
• n1, trio: period with transposed consequent
• n2: period with transposed consequent
• n2, trio: period
• n3: antecedent-continuation
• n3, trio: period
• n4: antecedent-continuation
• n4, trio: period
• n5: period
• n5, trio: period
• n6: sentence
• n6, trio: sentence* (with contrasting phrase)
• n7: antecedent-continuation
• n7, trio: period
• n8: antecedent-continuation
• n8, trio: period
• n9: sentence
• n9, trio: antecedent-continuation
• n10: antecedent-continuation
• n10, trio: period
• n11: antecedent-continuation
• n11, trio: sentence
• n12: antecedent-continuation
• n12, trio: period

Eleven of these themes are periods, only five are sentences, but eight are antecedent-continuation hybrids.

Here are the stats for K. 585, composed in 1789.

• n1: sentence
• n1, trio: period
• n2: sentence
• n2, trio: period
• n3: antecedent-continuation
• n3, trio: antecedent-continuation
• n4: antecedent-continuation
• n4, trio: antecedent-continuation or sentence with mirror variation of bi
• n5: period
• n5, trio: period
• n6: period
• n6, trio: period
• n7: antecedent-continuation
• n7, trio: sentence with continuous figure (motive)
• n8: period
• n8, trio: antecedent-continuation, but similar ci
• n9: period
• n9, trio: Period
• n10: sentence
• n10, trio: period
• n11: antecedent-continuation
• n11, trio: period
• n12: period
• n12, trio: period

For periods, n = 13; for sentences, n = 4; for antecedent-continuation hybrids, n = 7.

For the late menuets, then, periods do outnumber any other type, but constitute only about half of the total, with antecedent-continuation hybrids significantly represented and sentences by no means missing.

In the next post, I will discuss some examples of the antecedent-continuation hybrid from these three sets of menuets.