I think that if the world would leave me alone, if the Maestro's voice in my head would just shut up, and if the little critic in me would piss off, I could compose minuets until they flew out of my arse. I don't mean those tinkly little harpsichord dances that invoke images of towering powdered wigs and paniers that are 6-feet wide, I mean the symphonic movements that are such an intrinsic part of the music of the Classical period. They were never meant to be danced to, you see. They were just the dregs of the earlier period's dance suites that no one bothered to quit composing until, well, probably when young Beethoven walked into Papa Haydn's study and shouted, "Sod it! I don't need no stinking minuets!"...I was born about 250 years too late. I feel out of sync with the world of modern music most of the time and it's never more pronounced than when the composer in me rears its disgruntled head and begs to be allowed to write music that I've been told for 24 years is not only passè, but that it's nothing but insignificant fluff for music boxes.
I remember one night many years ago a fellow composer I'd met backstage called and asked if I'd like to meet him and some other local composers at a bar for some musical chat. I was silent most of the evening because these were all "intellectual" composers. In other words, smug, self-important pricks. While drinking wine we got into a discussion about the trio sonata form, a subject about which I knew quite a bit. At last I felt I could contribute something of my own, but I was shut-up when my host observed, "Yes, well, you're just a neo-classicist." I've heard all kinds of crap like that from that kind of talentless, elitist snob through the years.
What I love about the minuet is the form. The minuet is usually the third movement of a four-movement piece and is in 3/4 time. The minuet is paired with a second minuet, called a trio. After the trio, the first minuet returns. After the minuet and trio sections are each repeated, the first minuet comes back without repeats:
||: A :|: BA :|: C :|: DC :|: ABA :||
Here's a link to a performance of the menuetto of Mozart's Symphony in E-flat. Sorry I have to send you there; the owner disabled the embed feature.
The first day I was in Maestro Salazar's third semester composition class, auditing it before I enrolled for the next semester, he was talking to the students about their final assignment, which was to compose a symphonic movement each. These would later be played by the Civic Orchestra on the day of the finals. He went through the pieces with them and, perceiving there was no minuet, I went home that evening and dashed out one in F, scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons and French horns, timpani and strings. The next morning I came into class and when he asked me what I had in my hand I told him that it was my contribution, a menuetto.
He took it from me, sat down at the piano and began playing it. (I remember vividly that when he got to the trio he left off playing and exclaimed, "Oh! That's so 'horns' of you!") After he was finished he asked me when I'd composed the piece and I replied, "Last night." Around the room there was an audible, unison "Shit!"
I don't like composing minuets because they're easy for me. A lot of people have told me that there's no real challenge to writing them because they follow such a strict form, but I always reply, "Do you mean that writing a sonnet, or haiku, is easier than writing free-verse? I think that being confined to a form creates the greater challenge to be concise."
Maybe I'll just compose some minuets anyway, just for me. I like them, damn it.
