Dances

Dances are generally composed to facilitate or accompany dancing. The earliest Western dance music that we can still reproduce with a degree of certainty are the surviving medieval dances. In the Baroque period, the major dance styles were noble court dances. In the classical music era, the minuet was frequently used as a third movement in longer and more complex compositions such as symphonies and sonatas, although in this context it would not accompany any dancing. The waltz also arose later in the classical era. The romantic music period saw the rise of various other nationalistic dance forms like the barcarolle, mazurka, ecossaise, ballade and polonaise.