In sixty years of playing and conducting Haydn’s and Mozart’s music, tempi have always been a central concern. I have sought to keep Andantes moving along, especially in 6/8, Allegros not too fast unless specified, and Alla Breves normally twice as fast as Common Time. I feel reasonably sure of my footing.

But finding suitable historical speeds for the Minuets has been more speculative. No doubt they were danced at different speeds all over Europe. But should Classical Minuets be stately and slow, as  Grove suggests? Should they be fast and lively, as Muffat, and many others, insisted? Or are can they be somewhere in between? “Allegretto” and “Moderato” are often seen.

Perhaps some scholars already know the answers to these questions. If so please tell me; I am not a musicologist, just a musician who seeks essential evidence for what I do. And there’s a second, even more pressing question: I have never met anyone yet who had an explanation as to exactly when and how the Minuet became so much slower by the end of the 18th century than it had been at the start.

A FEW INTRODUCTORY POINTS:

1. The French Court Minuet was a fast, very formal, very complicated dance, with numerous exact steps and patterns, courtesies, removing and replacing of hats and the like. The lady’s feet were not very visible beneath long skirts, but the men had to be absolutely perfect. It was danced by single couples, one after the other, from the King and Queen downwards, with the whole court watching,- and no doubt criticising. To dance it slowly would be difficult enough; to perform it fast was a real test. It needed to show you off as incredibly expert, noble, poised but completely relaxed,- and above all as having no other work to do than spend several hours every day practising, for months at a time. This was barely “social dancing” at all. It was something much more professional. Indeed often courtiers were dragooned into appearing with the King as dancers in theatrical stagings of Opera Ballets.  The Minuet here was weaponised court etiquette and not for the faint-hearted; but it became immensely fashionable in other European courts.

2. Most  readers will know that in the Classical period, as well as the Baroque, Tempi Giusti were derived from three main sources: Metre, Prevailing Note Values, and (more advisory) Tempo Words. (Additional indicators were Heavy and Light style, Church and Secular, Learned and Entertaining;  but these are not so relevant to this paper).

3. The various words Minuet, Menuet, Menuetto etc do not appear to imply any differences in speed.

4.  I have concentrated on symphonic work in this paper. All the same arguments apply to chamber music.

THE MAIN QUESTION

1. Haydn gave no fewer than six different tempo words for his Minuets: plain “Menuet”, and adding Moderato, Allegretto, Allegro, Allegro Molto, and even Presto to it. He also claimed somewhere that he had “invented” the Allegretto version to sit between fast ones and slow ones.

2. For many years I supposed that the plain word Menuet meant rather steady: because Grove and other British sources said so; because Allegretto and Allegro were presumably faster; and because the Minuet in the Act 1 Finale of Mozart’s Don Giovanni was evidently fairly steady (for reasons to be discussed later).

3. However Grove is certainly wrong. The French Minuet, which conquered Europe in the late 17th and 18th centuries, was quite fast. Every dance treatise confirms this, as do numerous pendulum metronome charts of the time. The latter show a wide range of sometimes very fast speeds. But once the wilder suggestions have been sorted out (see Beverly Jerold’s important The French Time Devices Revisited; Dutch Journal of Music Theory 2010) a consensus would seem to be around 50 to the bar (no matter whether written as dotted half or dotted quarter).

4. Nevertheless by the end of the 18th century the Minuet was danced noticeably slower. Many sources, and even Beethoven’s 8th Symphony Tempo di Menuetto, make that clear. Actually in Italy it was slower already,- as the boy Mozart noticed (see a letter to his sister, 24.03.1770).

5. So the question is: when in greater Germany, and how quickly, did it change? Bach and Handel must presumably still be played fast. Harnoncourt certainly got that one wrong (as I also used to). But as the Classical style began, did Haydn and Mozart write fast or slow Minuets?

BREIDENSTEIN

The Mozart scholar Helmut Breidenstein recently published a most important and weighty volume: Mozarts Tempo-System (Tectum Wissenschaftsverlag 2015; English edition, translated by Lionel Friend, 2019) which, while surveying the whole of Mozart’s output in great detail, makes two important suggestions:

1. First, he claims that the Minuet was still a fairly lively dance in much of greater Germany until late in the century. Mozart added tempo words only rarely; he normally allowed the usual slowing effect that frequent sixteenth notes implied, to do the job. When he did add the word Allegretto, Breidenstein suggests that he meant a slower tempo. He doesn’t evince any written evidence for this theory, and I have my doubts. Let us see later how Haydn’s and Mozart’s Minuets look in this light.

2. Breidenstein’s second important suggestion is that, when in 1748 the Empress Maria Theresia opened the Vienna Hofburg balls to the bourgeoisie as “a means of rapprochement of the different classes”, the Minuet, which always opened the proceedings, was found to be far too difficult for the untrained middle classes, and had to be slowed down and simplified. Again Breidenstein does not give us any direct written evidence for this change of speed (which may in any case have been only gradual), but it does seem highly likely.

3. So this could have been the tipping point towards slower Minuets that I have been searching for for so long. In 1748 Haydn was 16, and would have experienced such a change in real time. Breidenstein supposes that in Salzburg, on the other hand, Mozart was used to the Minuet as still a sprightly court dance. That could account for his complaint to his sister (letter quoted above)) that in Italy it was much too slow “lasting as long as an entire symphony”.

HAYDN

So let’s look first at Haydn’s dance and symphony Minuets. We have of course no autograph metronome indications for his works, so any suggestions I make here must of necessity be subjective, and endangered by modern instincts. Nevertheless my wife Kay was a professional Baroque and Classical dancer and choreographer, and her advice is valuable. Although she was brought up in the “slow” English Minuet tradition, she now agrees  that the French Minuet was lively, but insists that the complicated steps would be difficult to imagine any faster than 50 to the bar.

1. Haydn’s early printed sets of Minuet dances look around 50 to the bar to me. They have a strong one-in-the-bar feel, and no small notes to steady them down. His set of Deutsche (German Dances) would of course be faster, at perhaps 74 to the bar. These were traditionally written in 3/8 rather than 3/4.

  2. His early Symphonies (Nos. 6 to 43) also look like 50+ to the bar.  Those with sixteenths or dottings (eg 6,7,13,25,42) might imply 42-4 per measure? So he still seems to be expecting a lively dance as the norm, though of course they could have been played at many speeds.  Perhaps the Minuet was only slowing gradually in Vienna, and was still a bit lively?

3. Suddenly in 1771/2 Haydn starts for the first time to add Allegretto to a majority of his middle-period Symphonies,- those which do not have sixteenths to slow them. According to Breidenstein’s theory Allegretto should mean slower. OK, Symphony 44 is “learned”, 48 is “Royal”.  But do Symphonies 52, 64, and 76, for instance, have Allegretto just in order to steady their Minuets? Or should they actually be faster? They have no small notes to hold them back! Had the Vienna Minuet by now got sufficiently slow that Haydn now needed to encourage it to move along?

4. Would you in fact use the word Allegretto to slow something down? Elsewhere we find Haydn using Menuetto Moderato to do just that (eg in Symphony 100). And there is a particular reason why Allegretto might mean not slower but a little faster: All the treatises write of the Minuet as “in one”; the dancing masters apparently beat the tempo with their hands not three times but “once in a bar”. That beat at c50 would feel like Andante 3/8 to a musician then. It still does today. Right next to Andante (as Mozart himself explains) was Allegretto,- a little faster. All Haydn’s Allegretto Minuets work fine at say 52 the bar. Let’s see what happened next.

5. Haydn’s 1785/6 Paris Symphonies (Nos. 82-7) most have Allegretto Minuets, except for 82 and 87. Since these already have many small notes to slow them down, surely here Allegretto must mean faster than “Menuet”, mustn’t it?  In any case I simply can’t believe that in Paris (of all places) the norm might not here be Haydn’’s Allegretto, at c52. Certainly that looks like a good speed to me for these 4 movements. Perhaps the Vienna Minuet had become so slow by 1786, that Haydn now thought of the old “normal” French dance as his Allegretto?

6.  Finally, in the London Symphonies, only 2 plain “Menuets” remain. Of the rest 1 is Moderato, 4 are Allegretto, and 4 Allegro, while 1 is Allegro Molto. Very likely by 1791 the Minuet was danced slowly in London too,-  by lawyers and doctors and other professionals…  The very fact that Allegretto and Allegro are used at all has to mean that the plain Menuet is slower than them, doesn’t it?  The Allegretto feels like the normal French c52 to me. So it certainly looks as if plain “Menuet” is slowish (c.42 the bar?) by now.

MOZART

Now for Mozart’s dance and concert Minuets.

1. Breidenstein’s supposition that all Mozart’s Salzburg Minuet dances are a lively c50 in the bar seems right when I look at them. His Deutsche are of course faster, being of commoner sock.

2. In the concert music the four Menuetto Allegretto markings, like Haydn’s early examples, could slow down simply written dances just out of preference. But then again (as I suggested with Haydn) they might speed them up!  Difficult  i’n it?

3. In the Vienna years, as Breidenstein points out, the dance music all looks slower than in Salzburg: a heavy 3/4 beat ,with many small notes and dotted figures. He suggests c.42 to the bar, which seems credible. All the 14 Minuets marked Allegretto could be slower, as Breidenstein maintains; but if the regular dance was now slow, they might all also work better faster!

4. Of Mozart’s early symphony Minuets only one (K200) has a tempo word (Allegretto), But suddenly those in the famous last three are all marked Allegretto. Do we not smell the likely influence of Haydn here,- together of course with the ever-slowing Vienna Minuet?  And what speed do these Allegrettos imply? Must it not be the French 52, exactly like Haydn?

5. A word about about the Hummel and Czerny metronome suggestions in their piano arrangements of the last three

symphonies ( and Haydn’s London twelve). Their tempi for some of the movements are not  unconvincing, but their Minuet suggestions are a disaster (88 for the bar in the Jupiter Symphony for instance). After 1800 the Waltz had run the Minuet off its feet, as Beethoven cheerfully evidenced from his 1st Symphony onwards. But whereas he had not forgotten the traditional Tempo di Menuetto (in his 8th Symphony), Hummel and Czerny were clearly carried away by the new Waltz craze as they sat feverishly at their keyboards. They should have known better than to treat Haydn’s and Mozart’s delightful but old-fashioned Minuets as Waltzes.

THE STEADY VIENNA MINUET

So each of us has to decide whether Allegretto means slower or faster for Haydn and Mozart Allegretto Minuets. I come down firmly on the faster side, but am very ready to hear other views, and to change my mind if proved wrong. Some more relevant evidence for a steady basic Minuet in 1780-95 Vienna and London might be:

1. Kirnberger and Schulz both felt that the German Minuet was “too staid” for the liveliness of the French.

2. The influence of Italy in Austria was very marked throughout the 18th century. Remember Mozart found the Minuet there very slow.

3.The Ländler was faster than the Minuet, the Deutscher yet faster, and the Waltz almost off the scale. But since by now all these dances were beginning to compete with each other, the Minuet could be allowed to simply relax into a slower niche.

4. In the late symphonies of Haydn and Mozart, after an easy-going second movement, and before a lively fourth, a steady Minuet fitted more satisfyingly. If itoo fast it might spoil the exciting Finale.

CODA: DON GIOVANNI

You will remember that in the Act 1 Finale Mozart brilliantly fits together all three of the most popular dances of the Viennese Ridoutensaal balls: the courtly Minuet, the bourgeois Contretanz, and the vulgar Deutscher (or Teitscher as he called it). There were (are) two adjacent halls in the Hofburg, where two different orchestras played independently. Standing at the adjoining door must have given Mozart the Ivesian idea to play not two but three dances simultaneously. Each dance perfectly symbolises one of the three ladies that the Don attempts to seduce in the opera: the aristocratic Anna, the middle class Elvira (a doctor’s daughter?) and the servant girl Zerlina.

1. I had always supposed that this Minuet was a fairly steady representative of the 1780s in Vienna, linking up with Haydn’s unmarked “Menuet” in London, and echoed much later by Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony Tempo di Menuetto. Clearly the stage Minuet has to be fairly slow, for the other dances to fit. Breidenstein finds it entirely unrepresentative of a true Minuet, but I find it difficult to believe that Mozart would have shown his public a dance that was not immediately recognisable. An 18th century audience’s  personal experience of music was through dance. They listened to music with their feet! There would have been understandable mutterings if the Minuet on stage was unrecognisable. So it seems likely to have been in some way representative of what people were used to, slow as it is.

2. I usually take that opening Minuet at about 102-6 the quarter, which allows for a reasonable Contretanz, such as Beethoven’s  Prometheus Finale (Allegretto), or the look of Mozart’s own 1791 set, and a suitably wild Teitsch for the lower classes. 

ENVOI

We are in great need of more evidence about the history of all these matters. Perhaps readers can come up with some. Thanks to Helmut Breidenstein (he died just last year), although not always agreeing with him, I now feel a little surer about tackling the Classical Minuet. I have probably been conducting (and teaching) the early Minuets of Haydn and Mozart too slowly, and will now try them around the 52 to the bar mark. However from 1770 or so onwards I will expect the Viennese Minuet to have slowed to say 42, –  enough to require Allegretto in order to maintain the French style. Allegro Minuets I will continue to play at about 62.

I look forward to much discussion in these pages. Haydn and Mozart tempi are a never-ending fasciation.

Article for Early Music 2021