Entrée

What it means

Entrée is the French word for “entrance” and designates in music a movement that accompanies an entrance or opens a work. The meaning has several layers.

In French ballet and opera of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, entrée designates both the entrance of a group of dancers and the music that accompanies it. A ballet consisted of a sequence of such entrées. From this a type of movement of its own developed: a solemn entrance march, often with dotted rhythms and in duple time.

In the more general sense, the term also designates the opening movement of a suite or introductory music in general. In this use it stands close to the prelude or the overture.

In the notation

As a type of movement, the entrée is usually notated in duple time, with dotted rhythms, measured tempo, and solemn character. The designation stands as a movement heading. In ballet scores, entrées appear as numbers with indications of the characters who appear.

Musical use

The entrée belongs to the French stage music of the Baroque and is met in ballets, operas, and the suites compiled from them. In the nineteenth century the designation lives on in ballet as a name for entrance numbers. In circus music the entrance of the artists is likewise designated in this way.

In the nineteenth century entrée gained a further meaning: in the classical grand pas de deux, as established by Marius Petipa, it designates the first of five parts — the joint entrance of the soloists before the adagio, the two variations, and the coda.

Performance practice

Play solemnly and measured; an entrée accompanies an entrance and needs dignity. Bring out dotted rhythms sharply. Keep the tempo steady, especially when dancing or processing. And check whether the movement is meant more as a march or as a dance — the heading alone does not always say.