Menuetto/Trio: Moderato e grazioso.
The minuet is a tender song-melody; yet surprises arise in the trio that was used by Saint-Saens as the basis for his Variations on a theme of Beethoven for four-hand piano Op.35. This was the last time that Beethoven used minuet in a major piano work. The minuet, with a beautiful singing tune presented in terms of the utmost simplicity, has two strains of eight bars, each repeated, with the endings so modified as to interlock with the repeat at first and to make a full close, delayed by an appoggiatura, the second time. In contrast, the trio section consists of very short phrases and single chords. Diminished sevenths make another harmonic inflection in the first, the minor ninths arising in the second, where the chords become for three bars grouped into a 2/4 cross-rhythm against the prevailing 3/4. The minuet is repeated, and then the tiny coda, based on the principal feature of Ex.7, is governed by the minor ninth complex of the second half of the minuet.