Literally meaning “joke”, this is usually the third movement of a larger work such as a symphony or sonata, and is often quick in tempo and light in style.

The minuet is a dance that was incorporated as a quick and lively third movement of a larger work, usually a sonata, and was later replaced by the scherzo. The sonata minuet is divided into three sections: the first and last are called minuet and the middle is called the trio.

Cocktail Party Fact: Premiered and broadcast at the height of the Second World War, the limpid beauty of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ 5th Symphony had the effect on listeners huddled in air raid shelters of, in the words of one Londoner, “a reassuring hand on one’s shoulder.”
Commitment Factor: About 38 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Modern Period. A [...]

Committment Factor: About 32 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Modern Period. A symphony in four movements.
What to Listen For: Audiences expecting anything like the meditative beauty of the composer’s 3rd Symphony were stunned by the 4th. The first movement opens in a mood of apoplectic rage: you can practically see the composer’s fist in your face. The [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: This symphony was composed as recovery therapy following a rather half-hearted suicide attempt. A tormented homosexual, Tchaikovsky foolishly married a neurotic music student he hardly knew, then tried to kill himself by standing naked in the Volga river in mid-winter. His wife, whom he never divorced, went crazy and died in an [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Originally conceived as a traditional four-movement symphony, it was reworked by Jean Sibelius into its present three-movement form; but you can still hear the original scherzo in the finale of the first movement.
Commitment Factor: About 32 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Late Romantic Period. After the Second, Sibelius’s most popular symphony.
What to Listen For: [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Jean Sibelius composed his Third Symphony on a commission from the British composer Granville Bantock. Although premiered in Finland, it was performed in London soon afterward with Sibelius conducting, thus beginning England’s long national obsession with the Finnish master.
Commitment Factor: About 26 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Romantic period. A symphony in three movements.
What to [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Music Critic and Composer Virgil Thomson called this most popular of  Sibelius’ symphonies “hopelessly provincial.”
Commitment Factor: About 40 minutes
Vital Statistics: Late Romantic/Early Modern Period (1902). A four-movement symphony with the last two movements attached, taking a cue from Beethoven’s Fifth.
What to Listen For: The first movement is a very interesting piece in [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: The title refers to the Dusseldorf, the city by the Rhine where Schumann was engaged as a conductor of the town orchestra. He was, by all accounts, a really lousy conductor, and he had eight children to support.
Commitment Factor: About 35 minutes
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period (1850). This is, unusually, a five-movement symphony, [...]

Commitment Factor: About 40 minutes, though there’s a lot of leeway depending on repeats and the tempo of the slow movement.
Vital Statistics: The quintessential early Romantic symphony (1845), with four movements linked by a “motto” theme that opens the work and appears in all of the other movements.
What to Listen For: The “motto” theme is, [...]