Major/minor compositions are musical compositions that begin in a major key and end in a minor key (generally the parallel minor), specifying the keynote (as C major/minor). This is a very unusual form in tonal music,[1][2] although examples became more common in the nineteenth century.[3] There are far fewer major/minor compositions than minor/major ones[4] (the latter category of which includes, but is not limited to, all minor-key works that end with a Picardy third, as well as many Classical- and Romantic-period symphonies, concertos, sonatas and chamber works, and individual movements thereof.)
The major/minor compositions in the following lists do not necessarily end with a minor chord; a final passage in minor ending with a sonority that fails to re-establish the major mode (for example, an open octave or fifth) is sufficient.
Works falling into the following categories are excluded:
Compositions that would be major/minor, but end inconclusively on the major dominant of the final minor key, e.g. Nos. 2 and 9 of Robert Schumann's Kerner cycle, Op. 35, or Schumann's Die Nonne, Op. 49 No. 3;
Compositions in which the beginning only hints at a possible reading of a major key without really establishing it, such as the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, Haydn's two string quartets, Op. 33 No. 1 and Op. 64 No. 2, C. P. E. Bach's Piano Sonata, Wq. 55/3, or the first movement of Alkan's Grande sonate 'Les quatre âges' (all of which are in B minor, but start with the possibility of D major);
Compositions in which the opening major chord merely serves a function (e.g. dominant or Neapolitan) in the ensuing minor key, without being tonicized in its own right, such as Saint-Saëns' Danse macabre or Chopin's first Ballade;
Compositions that are only incidentally major/minor due to being unfinished, without any indication that the composer intended them to be major/minor, such as Schubert's Piano Sonata in C, D. 840 or Haydn's String Quartet in D minor, Op. 103;
Frequently performed portions of a larger work consisting of what is technically two separate movements, if the first of these finishes clearly on the tonic (and thus doesn't require continuation), such as the opening pair of movements in Beethoven's Piano Sonata Op. 109 (connected by an attacca);
Entire extended works as song cycles, ballets, operas and oratorios that finish in a different tonic than the starting one, unless the two keys carry clear extramusical or programmatic connotions within the work (an explanation of which must accompany any such listings below).
Beethoven – Piano Quartet No. 1 in E♭ WoO 36, i (and ii) (E♭)[35] (although sometimes construed as two separate movements, they are not really separable as the first ends with a half-cadence leading into the second)
Mozart – Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio), Aria, "Solche Hergelauf'ne Laffen" (F-a) (though the aria is interrupted by spoken dialogue after the full cadence in F major, before continuing in A minor at a new tempo)
Mozart (completed by Süssmayr) – Requiem, VII. Communio (B♭-d) (ends on an open fifth in a D minor context)
The key scheme in the opera is constructed mostly on a sharp-flat principle; thus the opening, reaching G♯ major, is the sharpest music in the whole opera, and many portentions or descriptions of disaster in the opera are written in six or seven flats or even beyond. Mussorgsky intended an ending in A♭ minor for the final scene, in which the Old Believers commit mass suicide; this was respected by Stravinsky in his completion, although written enharmonically for easier reading. Other completions do not respect this: Rimsky-Korsakov ends in A♭ major, Shostakovich in F major. Valery Gergiev's productions, though using Shostakovich's completion, cut the final bars and end with an orchestral restatement of the Old Believers' final chorus (as written by Rimsky-Korsakov and reorchestrated by Shostakovich) in G♯ minor, thus following the original key scheme.
However, some authorities consider this to be an unfinished work; two incomplete C-major movements (D. 346 and D. 309A) have been put forward as candidates for the missing finale, both of which would make this cease to be major/minor.
Schubert – Deutscher Tanz, D. 365 No. 22 (Op. 9 No. 22) (B-g♯)
↑ Cone, Edward T. and Robert P. Morgan. "Beyond Analysis". Music. A View from Delft. Selected Essays (University of Chicago Press: Chicago 1989), p. 74.
↑ Hicks, Anthony. "Late Additions to Handel's Oratorios". Music in Eighteenth-Century England: Essays in Memory of Charles Cudworth, ed. Hogwood, Christopher and Richard Luckett, Cambridge University Press (1983), p. 150.
↑ Deruchie, Andrew. The French Symphony at the Fin de Siècle: Style, Culture, and the Symphonic Tradition, Boydell & Brewer (2013), pp. 114–15.
↑ Bitzan, Wendelin. "A Milestone of Symbolist Music: A Multi-Perspective Examination of Nikolai Medtner's Sonata-Ballade, Op. 27". Nikolai Medtner's Early Piano Sonatas: Analytic Studies on their Genesis, Style, and Compositional Technique, (Berlin University of the Arts, Faculty of Music, 2016), p. 41
↑ Wilson, Conrad. Notes on Mendelssohn: 20 Crucial Works, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing (2005), p. 30.
↑ Todd, R. Larry. "Wanderlust". Mendelssohn Studies, Cambridge University Press (2006), p. 225.
↑ Jones, Evan Allan. Intimate Voices: Shostakovich to the Avant-Garde. Dmitri Shostakovich: The String Quartets (University of Rochester Press: Rochester 2009), p. 8.
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