Previously unpublished. Already the composer of the Menuet antique (1895), Ravel seems to have written the Menuet in C-sharp minor at the same period as the Sonatine for piano (1903-1905), the latter also including, as a secondmovement, a mouvement de menuet.

In this Menuet of 1904, as in his other minuets, he placed himself firmly in the tradition developed by the Baroque French harpsichordists, rather than in the stylistic lineage of Vienneseclassicism.