At a time when composers did not challenge the two-reprise structure and inevitable double bars of the minuet and trio, the stereotyped metric and rhythmic characteristics of these movements became an inviting target for originality and wit. Haydn at the end of his life may have wished for someone to write “a really new Minuet,” but no exhaustion of possibilities is evident in either his or Mozart's symphonies. Two significant features of the Menuetto and Trio movement will form the principal subject of this chapter: the intricate relationship between phrase rhythm, dynamics, and orchestration that characterizes the Menuetto, and the often-remarked final cadence that begins the Trio. In 1976, Leonard B. Meyer devoted nearly seventy pages to an explication of the Trio of Mozart's G-minor Symphony, K. 550. The length of the study vindicated his premise, that his earlier assertion that “complexity was at least a necessary condition for value” in music was “if not entirely mistaken, at least somewhat confused,” because “what is crucial is relational richness, and such richness (or complexity) is in no way incompatible with simplicity of musical vocabulary and grammar.” Indeed, he suggests that the listener is able to appreciate the complexities of the Trio “precisely because these arise out of uncomplicated, unassuming tonal means” (emphasis added). In this chapter, the tension between simplicity and complexity will form the background of the discussion.

Menuetto

The beginning of the Menuetto is unstable. In a thin texture played only by the violins for two bars, the piece lacks a tonic pitch until bar 2, a bass register until bar 3, and most strikingly, a strong downbeat or sense of meter.