This article is about the musical term. For the Doctor Who audio play, see
Scherzo (audio drama). For the piano composition by Stravinsky, see
Scherzo (Stravinsky).
A scherzo (/ˈskɛərtsoʊ/, UK also /ˈskɜːrt-/, Italian:[ˈskertso]; plural scherzos or scherzi), in
westernclassical music, is a short composition – sometimes a
movement from a larger work such as a
symphony or a
sonata. The precise definition has varied over the years, but scherzo often refers to a movement that replaces the
minuet as the third movement in a four-movement work, such as a
symphony,
sonata, or
string quartet.[1] The term can also refer to a fast-moving humorous composition that may or may not be part of a larger work.[2]
Origins
Look up scherzo in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
The
Italian word scherzo means "
joke" or "jest." More rarely, the similar-meaning word badinerie (also spelled battinerie; from
French, "jesting") has been used. Sometimes the word scherzando ("joking") is used in
musical notation to indicate that a passage should be executed in a playful manner.
An early use of the word scherzo in music is in light-hearted
madrigals of the
early baroque period, which were often called scherzi musicali, for example:
Claudio Monteverdi wrote two sets of works with this title, in 1607 and in 1632.
Antonio Brunelli wrote Scherzi, Arie, Canzonette e Madrigale for voices and instruments in 1616.
Later, composers applied the term scherzo (plural scherzos or scherzi) and sometimes badinerie[4] to certain instrumental works in fast tempos in
duple metertime signature, for example:
The scherzo, as most commonly known today, developed from the
minuet and trio, and gradually came to replace it as the third (sometimes second) movement in
symphonies,
string quartets,
sonatas, and similar works. It traditionally retains the
triple metertime signature and
ternary form of the minuet, but is considerably quicker. It is often, but not always, of a light-hearted nature.
The main features include a 6 - 8 bar melody with one beat per bar feel.
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 classical suites (the first
Brandenburg Concerto has a famous example). In some cases the scherzo is in
sonata form, for example the third movement of
Brahms's Fourth Symphony in E Minor.
Appearance/examples in compositions
Scherzos occasionally differ from this traditional structure in various ways.
Some examples are not in the customary triple meter—for example, the scherzo of
Tchaikovsky's
Fourth Symphony, which is in 2 4 time; or the trio section of the scherzo from his
Second Symphony which is in 2 8 time. Another example is 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[who?] have attempted to account for these irregularities by analyzing the scherzo as the sonata's slow movement, which is rather fast. That would keep the traditional structure for a four-movement sonata that Beethoven usually followed, especially in the first half of his piano sonatas.
Joseph Haydn wrote minuets that are close to scherzi in tone — but it was
Ludwig van Beethoven and
Franz Schubert who first used scherzi widely, with Beethoven in particular turning the polite rhythm of the minuet into a much more intense – and sometimes even savage – dance. Although in 1781, Haydn substituted menuets for scherzi in all of his 6
String Quartets, Op. 33.
The scherzo remained a standard movement in the symphony and related forms through the 19th century and beyond. Composers also began to write scherzi as pieces in themselves, stretching the boundaries of the form.
The first three of
Frédéric Chopin's four well-known
scherzos for the
piano are especially dark, with an intense energy, and hardly come off as jokes.
Robert Schumann remarked of them, "How is 'gravity' to clothe itself if 'jest' goes about in dark veils?" [5] Chopin's four scherzos are written as single movements, on an unprecedented large scale going beyond the previous Beethovenian model of classical multi-movement works.[6]
In a letter,
Brahms referred to the scherzo from his
Second Piano Concerto as a "little wisp of a scherzo",[7] in one of his typically sarcastic remarks, as it is a heavyweight movement.