text: A scherzo (, , ; plural scherzos or scherzi), in western classical music, is a short composition – sometimes a movement from a larger work such as a symphony or a sonata. The precise definition has varied over the years, but scherzo often refers to a movement that replaces the minuet as the third movement in a four-movement work, such as a symphony, sonata, or string quartet. The term can also refer to a fast-moving humorous composition that may or may not be part of a larger work.
  Origins
  The Italian word scherzo means "joke" or "jest." More rarely, the similar-meaning word badinerie (also spelled battinerie; from French, "jesting") has been used. Sometimes the word scherzando ("joking") is used in musical notation to indicate that a passage should be executed in a playful manner.
  An early use of the word scherzo in music is in light-hearted madrigals of the early baroque period, which were often called scherzi musicali, for example:
  Claudio Monteverdi wrote two sets of works with this title, in 1607 and in 1632.
  Antonio Brunelli wrote Scherzi, Arie, Canzonette e Madrigale for voices and instruments in 1616.
  Johann Baptist Schenk wrote Scherzi musicale (fourteen suites for gamba and continuo).
  Later, composers applied the term scherzo (plural scherzos or scherzi) and sometimes badinerie to certain instrumental works in fast tempos in duple meter time signature, for example:
  The scherzo of Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 3 for keyboard.