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A scherzo (plural scherzi) is a piece of music or a movement, often in a quick or light style and written in triple metre, that forms part of a larger piece such as a symphony, sonata, or string quartet. The word "scherzo" means "joke" or "game" in Italian. Sometimes the word scherzando (joking) is used in musical notation to indicate that a passage should be executed in a playful manner.

The scherzo developed from the minuet, and gradually came to replace it as the third (or sometimes second) movement in symphonies, string quartets, sonatas and similar works. It traditionally retains the triple metre time signature and ternary form of the minuet, but is considerably quicker. It is often, but not always, of a light-hearted nature.

An unrelated use of the word in music is in light-hearted madrigals of the Renaissance period, which were often called scherzi musicali. Claudio Monteverdi, for example, wrote two sets of works with this title, the first in 1607, the second in 1632.

History

Origins

The word "scherzo" was first used by Italian composer Gabriello Puliti to describe his Scherzi, capricci et fantasie, per cantar a due voci. Michael Praetorius introduced the term to Germany in his three volume treatise Syntagma musicum of 1619 as a synonym for aria. Until around the end of the Baroque period (ca. 1750) the term was also occasionally used for both vocal and instrumental compositions, such as Claudio Monteverdi's Scherzi musicali (1607), Antonio Brunelli's Scherzi, Arie, Canzonette e Madrigale (1616) for voices and instruments, Johann Schenk's Scherzi musicale (fourteen suites for gamba and continuo) or the scherzo of Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 3 for harpsichord.

Haydn and Beethoven

Composers used scherzi as movements within larger works beginning in the early 18th century. While a few of these are finales, they are primarily dance movements used in place of a minuet. Joseph Haydn wrote scherzi in place of minuets in his Op. 33 string quartets; these quartets are sometimes referred to as "Gil scherzo" since the movement that would normally be a minuet is headed with either "scherzando" or "scherzo". Haydn's intent in using these titles is unclear since the music is neither lighter nor more humorous than that of his minuets, and one of the movemetns in question is serious in tone and manner. Musicologist Hugh Macdonald writes that while "playfulness and jocularity are frequent enough in Haydn's music", Haydn did not concentrate those qualities in an alternative to the minuet and "preferred to exploit the scherzo spirit in his finales, as for instance in two of his piano sonatas (HXVI:50 and 51) written in London in 1794".

Ludwig van Beethoven was the first composer to use scherzi widely; he also took the term literallly by giving his scherzi a light and often humorous tone as well as a quick pace. Unlike Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Beethoven may have assumed that piano sonatas and smaller chamber works such as piano trios might follow the four-movement design of symphonies and string quartets. He apparently had doubts about this from his Op. 10, since four movements ceased to be a regular feature in these works

Beethoven's wind octet, composed in 1792 but published posthumously as Op. 103, contains his first true scherzo. The scherzo in the first of his Op. 1 piano trios, Macdonald writes, is "fast and brittle, with a touch of humor" and a sense of one beat per bar which is unlike the minuet.. The scherzo in the second trio of Op. 1 employs cross rhythms, a favorite feature of Beethoven's scherzi which would reach a high point in his string quartets Opp. 18 no. 6 and 135. Using "a highly sophisticated sense of musical humor", Beethoven would add elements of surprise or caprice in his scherzi — "very short, flippant phrases and soeme haydnesque surprises" in the second of his Op. 18 string quartets; "teasing syncopations" in his Op. 69 cello sonata. The "Spring" Sonata, Op. 24, contains perhaps Beethoven's "most unashamedly capricious" scherzo, "where the violin and piano seem constantly out of step with one another", while the violin sonata Op. 69 contains a "similarly whimsical" scherzo.

While he used the term "scherzo" only in the Second and Third Symphonies, Beethoven actually used scherzi in all his symphonies except the First and Eighth; the use of scherzi in place of minuets would become a standard practice in following generations. In these symphonic movements, Macdonald writes, "Beethoven generated great forward momentum by a combination of pace and rapidly alternating textures, and he maintained the Classical tradition of offering a different speed or character, or both, in his trios". These scherzi also show a broad expansion of the form, "beginning with the 'Eroica' with its tripartite trio and its written-out da capo, this time pianissimo and leading to a forceful coda'> This expansion was a consequence of slow movements and finales likewise growing in scale. Trios appear twice inm the scherzi of the Fourth and Seventh Symphonies, while in the latter there is also a further brief reference to the trio before the coda. The scherzo of the Ninth Symphony "is both humorous in in its unpredictable opening and sophisticated in his rapid fugal textures, and is developed on a scale to match that of the whole symphony".

19th century

The scherzo remained a standard movement in the symphony and related forms through the 19th century. Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann followed Beethoven's example in their symphonies, as did Johannes Brahms in his Second and Fourth Symphonies. In addition, Brahms regarded the scherzo from his Second Piano Concerto in B-flat, Op. 83 as a "tiny wisp of a scherzo," but it is extremely heavy, dark, and passionate. Conversely, the scherzi of Felix Mendelssohn, such as in the Octet and the incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the "Queen Mab" Scherzo from Hector Berlioz' choral symphony Roméo et Juliette, are much more delicate and etherial in orchestreation and overall tone. Some late 19th century composers, such as Antonin Dvorak and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, often used nationalistic dances such as the furiant and the dumka in their scherzi, while some of Gustav Mahler's scherzi used Austrian dances and grotesque musical effects.

Independent works and groups

Some scherzi were also written as independent works during the Baroque and Classical periods; they include three by J.S. Bach and two by Leopold Mozart. This type of scherzo came into vogue in piano music during the 19th century. These works were written mainly as virtuoso display pieces, as character-pieces, or as a combination of both. Composers of these works included Sigismond Thalberg, Edward Wolff and Stephen Heller, as well as Frédéric Chopin and Brahms. Out of Chopin's four well-known scherzi for the piano, the first three are especially dark and dramatic, and hardly come off as jokes. Robert Schumann remarked of them, "How is gravity to clothe itself if jest goes about in dark veils?" Independent orchestral scherzi also began to appear at the same time, with an early work being written by Clara Wieck in 1831. Later examples include Camille Saint-Saëns' tone poem Danse Macabre, Paul Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Igor Stravinsky's Scherzo fantastique. In addition, Richard Strauss's tone poem Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks is sometimes considered a scherzo in all but name; his Burleske for piano and orchestra was originally titled "Scherzo".

Some scherzi were also composed or published as groups of instrumental music. Antonio Salieri's Scherzi istrumentali a quattro di stile fugato is a late 18th century example, while several such collections were publised in the early 19th century for solo piano and piano four-hands. Two rare programmatic sequences of scherzi are T. Oesten's Olympische Spiele: 3 Scherzi, Op. 117 (written in 1857, depicting the sports of wrestling, discus throwing and boxing) and A.M. de Pusch's 3 Scherzos, which depict morning, noon and evening.

Form

The scherzo itself is a rounded binary form; but, like the minuet, is usually played with the accompanying Trio followed by a repeat of the Scherzo, creating the ABA or ternary form. This is sometimes done twice or more (ABABA). The "B" theme is a trio, a contrasting section not necessarily for only three instruments, as was often the case with the second minuet of baroque suites (the first Brandenburg concerto has a famous example). There are also examples from the late Baroque period by Bach (his Partita in A minor), and Haydn (the final movement of his piano sonata Hob. XVI:9) of scherzi in duple meter and without trios.

Most of the scherzi of Beethoven's symphonies (but not of his sonatas), such as that of Beethoven's Pastoral symphony (No. 6) contain two appearances of the trio, in which the second is sometimes varied and after the second of which the scherzo material often returns much foreshortened by way of a coda. Schumann, as noted by Cedric Thorpe-Davie would very often use two trios also, but different trios.

A technique that exists in some, but not all, scherzi is transposition of a repeated phrase. For example, in the second movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, the first four measures are played in the dominant key. The four measures following that are a repeat of the first four, but transposed up a perfect fourth to the tonic key. This effect creates the illusion of starting on the 'wrong' key, which corrects itself after the phrase is transposed.

Scherzi are occasionally found which differ from this traditional structure in various ways. For example, a few examples exist which are not in the customary triple meter, such as in Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 18. This example is also unusual in being written in orthodox sonata form rather than the usual ternary form for such a movement, and thus it lacks a Trio section. This sonata is also unusual in that the Scherzo is followed by a Minuet and Trio movement, whereas most sonatas have either a Scherzo movement or a Minuet movement, but not both. Some analysts have attempted to account for these irregularities by analyzing the Scherzo as the sonata's slow movement, which just happens to be rather fast, which would keep the traditional structure for a four-movement sonata that Beethoven usually followed, especially in the first half or so of his piano sonatas.

References

• Britannica Online, "scherzo".
• Kennedy, Michael, The Oxford Dictionary of Music (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, 1986). ISBN 0-19-311333-3.
• Russell, Tilden A. and Hugh Macdonald, ed. Stanley Sadie, "scherzo", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition, 29 vols. (London: MacMillan, 2001). ISBN 1-56159-239-0.
• Thompson, Wendy, ed. Alison Latham, "scherzo", The Oxford Companion to Music (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). ISBN 0-19-866212-2.
• Westrup, Sir Jack & F. Ll. Harrison, "scherzo", Collins Encyclopedia of Music (London: Chancellor Press, 1976). ISBN 0 907486 49 5.