Printable Version of Module 12: The Minuet in Changing Cultural Context
written by James Currie

Musical Works

1. J. S. Bach, French Suite #1, Minuet (1720)
   
   
2. Joseph Haydn, String Quartet in D, op. 64/5, Minuet (1790)
   
   
3. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, The Marraige of Figaro (opera), "Se vuol ballare" (1786) [4:21]
   Sir George Solti, Lib CD 189, Track 4

FIGARO
Well done, my noble master! Now I begin to understand the secret...and to see your whole scheme clearly: to London, is it? You go as minister, I as courier, and Susanna...confidential attachée.  It shall not be. Figaro has said it.

FIGARO
Bravo, signor padrone! Ora incomincio a capir il mistero, e a veder schietto tutto il vostro progetto: a Londra, è vero? Voi ministro, io corriero, e la Susanna segreta ambasciatrice. Non sarà, non sarà. Figaro il dice.
N. 3 Cavatina

FIGARO
If, my dear Count,
you feel like dancing,
I'll play the tune
on my little guitar, yes.
If you'll come
to my school,
I'll teach you
how to caper.
I'll know, I'll know, but wait,
I can uncover
his secret design
more easily by dissembling.
Acting by stealth
or openly,
here stinging,
there mocking,
all your plots
I'll overthrow.
If, my dear Count,
you feel like dancing,
I'll play the tune
on my little guitar.
(exit)

FIGARO
Se vuol ballare
Signor Contino,
il chitarrino
le suonerò, sì.
Se vuol venire
nella mia scuola,
la capriola
le insegnerò, sì.
Saprò, saprò, ma piano,
meglio ogni arcano
dissimulando
scoprir potrò.
L'arte schermendo,
l'arte adoprando,
di qua pungendo,
di là scherzando,
tutte le macchine
rovescierò.
Se vuol ballare,
Signor Contino,
il chitarrino
le suonerò.
(parte)

Readings

1. Two 18th-Century Authors on the Minuet

Johann George Sulzer, General Theory of the Fine Arts:

The [minuet] is universally well known, and deserves preference over the other social dances on account of its noble and charming nature....It appears to have been invented by the Graces themselves, and is more suited than any other dance for assemblages of persons who distinguish themselves by a fine manner of living.

C. J. von Feldenstein, Writing on the Choreographic Art of Dances and Dancing:

[The minuet] is well known over half the world, and in all classes, and although the greater part of man still considers it the easiest part of dancing, yet in the judgment of connoisseurs it takes the prize from all the others. And who can deny the minuet this honor? No one except the man who finds good taste only in the dancing of a boisterous peasant, and blindly admires the impetuous over the decorous in all movements of the body. The minuet is the queen of all dances; the test of every dancer who wants to acquire a reputation;...and...the best occasion for displaying everything beautiful and charming in nature which a body is capable of employing.

(Both translations by Wye Jamison Allanbrook, in The Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro & Don Giovanni.)

2. Johann Karl Friedrich Triest on the late eighteenth century in Germany

If one wanted to characterize the final fifth or tenth of the last century [i.e., the 1700's] with a single word, one could perhaps find no better term than "ferment." Almost all human knowledge and activity are affected by it, and to an ever increasing degree. Not only political opinions and theories, but scientific ideas and systems as well (even logic), have been shaken to their foundations; indeed, what is more, and is at the same time a distinguishing characteristic of the present era, these changes did not remain merely objects of knowledge or playthings for scholars and idle world-watchers, but have been translated unusually rapidly into practical life. Would it not be a miracle if the fine arts, which are so closely connected with those things, i.e. with both scientific and practical ideas, were not infected by this kind of ferment? --If the arts alone remained on their old track, where none but experienced men were permitted to hold the reins, and their great value was not fully amenable to common perception and understanding? --In fact, we find, after even the most cursory glance at the more recent state of the art of music, that the latter, far from not participating in the general ferment, could well serve as an emblem or model of important occurrences. --Fermentation (in physical as well as moral matters) occurs when slumbering forces are awakened, or subordinate ones seek to rise to the same level as others that have dominated them. Good is then mingled with bad; and this is how it was with the art of music at the end of the last century.

3. From "Perfume," by Patrick Susskind

...That sort of thing would not have been even remotely possible before! That a reputable craftsman and established commercant should have to struggle to exist--that had begun to happen only in the last few decades! And only since this hectic mania for novelty had broken out in every quarter, this desperate desire for action, this craze of experimentation, this rodomontado in commerce, in trade and in the sciences!

Or this insanity about speed. What was the need for all these new roads being dug up everywhere, and these new bridges? What purpose did they serve? What was the advantage of being in Lyon within a week? Who set any store by that? Whom did it profit? Or crossing the Atlantic, racing to America in a month--as if people hadn't got along without that continent for thousands of years. What had civilized man lost that he was looking for out there in jungles inhabited by Indians or Negroes? People even travelled to Lapland, up there in the North, with its eternal ice and savages who gorged themselves on raw fish. And now they hoped to discover yet another continent that was said to lie in the South Pacific, wherever that might be. And why all this insanity? Because the others were doing the same, the Spaniards, the damned English, the impertinent Dutch, whom you then had to go out and fight, which you couldn't in the least afford. One of those battleships cost a good 300,000 livres, and a single cannon shot would sink it in five minutes, for good and all, paid for with our taxes. The minister of finance had recently demanded one-tenth of all income, and that was simply ruinous, even if you didn't pay monsieur his tithe. The very attitude was perverse.

Man's misfortune stems from the fact that he does not want to stay in the room where he belongs. Pascal said that. And Pascal was a great man, a Frangipani of the intellect, a real craftsman, so to speak, and no one wants one of those any more. People read incendiary books now by Huguenots or Englishmen. Or they write tracts or so-called scientific masterpieces that put anything and everything in question. Nothing is supposed to be right any more, suddenly everything ought to be different. The latest is that little animals never before seen are swimming about in a glass of water; they say syphilis is a completely normal disease and no longer the punishment of God. God didn't make the world in seven days, it's said, but over millions of years, if it was He at all. Savages are human beings like us; we raise our children wrongly; and the earth is no longer round like it was, but flat on the top and bottom like a melon--as if it made a damn bit of difference! In every field, people question and bore and scrutinize and pry and dabble with experiments. It's no longer enough for a man to say that something is so or how it is so--everything now has to be one or another of these ridiculous experiments. These Diderots and d'Alemberts and Voltaires and Rousseaus or whatever names these scribblers have--there are even clerics among them and gentlemen of noble birth!--they've finally managed to infect the whole society with their perfidious fidgets, with their sheer delight in discontent and their unwillingness to be satisfied with anything in this world, in short, with the boundless chaos that reigns inside their own heads!

Wherever you looked, hectic excitement. People reading books, even women. Priests dawdling in coffee houses. And if the police intervened and stuck one of the chief scoundrels in prison, publishers howled and submitted petitions, ladies and gentlemen of the highest rank used their influence, and within a couple of weeks he was set free or allowed out of the country, from where he went right on with his unconscionable pamphleteering. In the salons people chattered about nothing but the orbits of comets and expeditions, about leverage and Newton, about building canals, the circulation of the blood, and the diameter of the earth.

The King himself had had them demonstrate some sort of new-fangled nonsense, a kind of artificial thunderstorm they called electricity. With the whole court looking on, His Majesty, or so it was said, appeared deeply impressed. Unthinkable! that his grandfather, the truly great Louis, under whose benificent reign Baldini [the narrator] had been lucky enough to have lived for many years, would have allowed such a ridiculous demonstration in his presence. But that was the temper of the times, and it would all come to a bad end.

When, without the least embarrassment, people could brazenly call into question the authority of God's Church; when they could speak of the monarchy--equally a creature of God's grace--and the sacred person of the King himself as if they were both simply interchangeable items in a catalogue of various forms of government to be selected on a whim; when they had the ultimate audacity and have it they did--to describe God Himself, the Almighty, Very God of Very God, as dispensable and to maintain in all earnestness that order, morals and happiness on this earth could be conceived of without Him, purely as matters of man's inherent morality and reason...God, great God!--then you needn't wonder that everything was turned upside down, that morals had degenerated, and that humankind had brought down upon itself the judgement of Him whom it denied. It would come to a bad end. The great comet of 1681--they had mocked it, calling it a mere clump of stars, while in truth it was an omen sent by God in warning, for it had portended, as was clear by now, a century of decline and disintegration, ending in the spiritual, political and religious quagmire that man had created for himself, into which he would one day sink and where only glossy, stinking swamp flowers flourished, like Pelissier [Baldini's enemy] himself!

Questions

Module 12 does not separate questions into "Questions on the musical works" and "Questions on the readings." Instead, you will follow a path that leads you through listening, reading, and viewing.

1. Watteau's Painting

The two people in the foreground of this painting are dancing a minuet. From this depiction, what kind of musical characteristics do you imagine the minuet as a genre might possess? For example, do you think it would be fast and energetic? Do you envisage it as mannered, or as a "free-for-all"?

From an examination of this painting, what kind of associations--cultural, affective, expressive, socio-economic, etc.--do you think might accrue around this dance genre?

How would you describe the setting in this painting for the dancing of the minuet? What relevance does this have?

2. The Minuet by J. S. Bach

This piece was written at roughly the same time as Watteau painted "Fetes Galantes."

Consider this minuet's musical characteristics: tempo, meter, dynamics, melodic contour, texture, form, and (as best you can) harmony. Would this piece serve as a suitable musical accompaniment for the dancers in Watteau's painting? Why or why not?

Would you like to dance to this minuet? If not, what kinds of person do you think would?

From a consideration of both the Watteau and the Bach, what class associations do you think the minuet had during the early 18th century? Who would be unlikely to dance it?

3. Sulzer and Feldenstein (Reading 1)

Having looked at Watteau and listened to Bach, how well does your growing conception of the minuet compare with these two eighteenth-century definitions? Where have Sulzer and Feldenstein got it right? Where have they got it wrong?

4. Patrick Suskind's "Perfume" (Reading 3)

How does this passage of historical fiction portray the 18th century, an era often called the "Age of Reason" or the "Enlightenment"? What have you learned in other Core Curriculum courses that fits, or contradicts, this picture?

5. Triest (Reading 2)

Why does Triest characterize the late 18th century as a period of ferment? Consult an encyclopedia article or a timeline.

6. Segue...

What kinds of historical developments during the course of the 18th century do you think might have had an effect on the minuet genre? Does history always have an effect on music? What do we have to gain from trying ot hear music from a historical perspective?

From your own listening experience, do you think that an understanding of history can increase one's listening enjoyment? If not, then for whom is music history written?

7. Haydn

Thoroughly examine the tempo, meter, dynamics, melodic contour, texture, form, and harmony of this minuet. In each of these parameters, how does Haydn's minuet compare to Bach's minuet?

How well would Haydn's minuet serve as an accompaniment for the dancers in the Watteau painting?

Does this minuet have different affective, expressive, cultural, class, and/or socio-economic associations than does Bach's minuet?

Would you want to conceive of the Haydn minuet as affected by the events and changes of the 18th century?

8. Mozart

Much of the text of Figaro's aria is set to a minuet. Why did Mozart set the text this way? In terms of the musical parameters listed above (tempo, contour, etc.), how does this minuet compare to the Haydn and Bach minuets?