Dance music is
music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany
dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement. In terms of performance, the major categories are live dance music and recorded dance music. While there exist attestations of the combination of dance and music in ancient times (for example
Ancient Greek vases sometimes show dancers accompanied by musicians), the earliest Western dance music that we can still reproduce with a degree of certainty are the surviving
medieval dances. In the
Baroque period, the major dance styles were
noble court dances (see
Baroque dance). In the
classical music era, the minuet was frequently used as a third
movement, although in this context it would not accompany any dancing. The
waltz also arose later in the classical era. Both remained part of the
romantic music period, which also saw the rise of various other nationalistic dance forms like the
barcarolle,
mazurka and
polonaise.