Other examples the second movement of Shostakovich's Symphony No.In a letter, Brahms referred to the scherzo from his Second Piano Concerto as a "little wisp of a scherzo", in one of his typically sarcastic remarks, as it is a heavyweight movement.
Robert Schumann remarked of them, "How is 'gravity' to clothe itself if 'jest' goes about in dark veils?" 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.
Composers also began to write scherzi as pieces in themselves, stretching the boundaries of the form. The scherzo remained a standard movement in the symphony and related forms through the 19th century and beyond. Although in 1781, Haydn substituted menuets for scherzi in all of his 6 String Quartets, Op.
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). This is sometimes done twice or more (ABABA). 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. The main features include a 6 - 8 bar melody with one beat per bar feel. It is often, but not always, of a light-hearted nature. It traditionally retains the triple meter time signature and ternary form of the minuet, but is considerably quicker. 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.
Look up scherzo in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.