anderson@uwvax.ARPA (05/01/84)
Hang on a minute-- minuets are in 3/4 time. Shouldn't one express the tempo in terms of the dotted half (not half)? It's not clear to me that one can talk about a "generic" minuet tempo. Measure = 80 might be OK for some Bach or Mozart minuets, but if you played the first movement of Beethoven's op. 54 piano sonata (which is marked "tempo di minuetto") at that speed it would be insanely fast. A question: are waltzes and minuets birds of a different feather from a rhythmic point of view? I tend to play waltzes (e.g. Chopin) at a much more consistent tempo, possibly because I know how to waltz (barely) but I have no idea of how to "minuet". -- David Anderson (...seismo!uwvax!anderson)