During the time of Haydn and Mozart, the third movement of a four-movement piece such as a symphony or string quartet was invariably a stylized dance movement called a minuet. By the end of the 1700s, though, Beethoven, in one of his many innovations, had largely replaced the minuet with a movement he called a “scherzo.” The word scherzo , which means “joke,” in Italian, had appeared in music as early as the 1600s, but it was Beethoven who gave the scherzo its modern character, and established a