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Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924)

Minuet No.1

Giacomo Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot are among the most frequently performed.  Puccini also wrote a few works for strings that are simply beautiful.  Minuet No.1 comes from a set of three that was written one year before his first major opera success; and carries, in miniature, the lovely lyrical sound for which he is known.

Puccini wrote his Three Minuets for string quartet in the early 1890s, at around the same time as he was writing what was to become his first operatic great success, Manon Lescaut.   The minuets and Manon share thematic material: parts of the first and third minuets are used in Act II, whilst the first theme of the second minuet appears in the opera’s orchestral introduction.

The Three Minuets are all beautifully lyrical.  Music critics of the time declared that the work was ‘full of good taste and refinement, … marked by that elegance and fluency that makes his music so agreeable.’  Each minuet is dedicated to figures in Puccini’s life, all eminent citizens of Lucca, his home city.  Indeed, it may be that in writing a set of minuets Puccini was also paying homage to the city’s most illustrious son, Luigi Boccherini, whose own Menuet (from the Quintet in A) is still so well known.

Program notes – see links below

https://www.jwpepper.com/Minuetto-No.-1/2472809.item#.YU6kQi0Rqqd

https://portuspress.com/shop/wind-quartet/puccini-three-minuets/