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From: ry@brunix.UUCP (Rich Yampell)
Newsgroups: net.music.classical
Subject: Re: Out-of-place Codas
Message-ID: <10434@brunix.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Apr-85 00:17:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: brunix.10434
Posted: Mon Apr 29 00:17:23 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Apr-85 03:10:56 EDT
References: <2429@randvax.UUCP> <1219@cornell.UUCP>
Reply-To: ry@nancy.UUCP (Rich Yampell)
Organization: Brown University Computer Science
Lines: 22

In article <1219@cornell.UUCP> (Uucp) cornell!mf (ARPA) mf@cornell-gvax (Bitnet) MF AT CRNLCS writes:
>In article <2429@randvax.UUCP> Ed Hall says of the coda of
>Shostakovitch's 5th: ``as part of the work as a whole, the coda seems
>strangly out of place, although it satisfied the Soviet officialdom as
>demonstrating "Socialist Realism" (where all struggles have happy
>endings).''
>
>Doesn't the same strike you about that of Mozart's 20th piano concerto
>K 466?  Most of the piece is dark and ``cosmic'' (the key of D minor
>being very suggestive) -- while the end so light, almost ...
>inconsequential in comparison.
>
>Though he probably was not writing for Soviet officialdom, one theory
>is that he wrote a ``happy ending'' to cater for the public taste.

Another piece that has "happy ending" after a dark piece is Brahm'
first piano concerto.  I once, in paper for a music class, wrote
that I felt that the ending didn't fit (I still don't); the professor
defended the ending, likening it to the Baroque practice of ending a
minor mode piece on a cadence to the tonic major.  Take it for what its
worth...