Is it true that...

[perfect_pitch]

In Baroque, Classical and Romantic Music (basically most western style) concertos from Bach to Rachmaninoff style in a minor key always end up finishing in the Major key (eg. Rach 3 begins d minor - ends in D Major, Mendlessohn Violin in e minor - starts in e minor - ends in E major.)...

Is this rule completely true, or are there exceptions. And before people start saying - no prokofiev and schoenberg break these rules - I'm not asking about that type of music - I'm talking about the conventional musical writing, the tonal composers.

[Kassaa]

Mozart C minor ends in C minor, although his D minor ends in D major. So there is at least one exception.

Edit, browsing to my mp3 folder: Saint-Saëns No. 2 starts in G minor and ends in G minor, further than that I can't find any more exceptions.

[panic]

I think there's another Saint-Saens that ends in minor, although I might be mistaken.

Scharwenka 1 and 3 both do. I haven't heard the end of 2.

[crazy for ivan moravec]

i don't think that such a rule exists. i think that these composers felt like writing the last movements/sections in major. the tradition has become instincts, and therefore it was more spontaneous. actually, it was really more of an instinctive move for baroque instrumentalists to end with the picardy third or not.

just an opinion.

[Tash]

wasn't there a thing back in the baroque where they always had a tierce de picardi because it was evil or something to finish in a minor key? but i don't think that extended into the romantic period...

[anda]

wasn't there a thing back in the baroque where they always had a tierce de picardi because it was evil or something to finish in a minor key? but i don't think that extended into the romantic period...

ending a work written in a minor tonality by using a final cadenza in the homonim major tonality is the picardian cadenza (the tierce de picardi tash mentioned creates this cadenza) - and it wasn't mandatory even in preclassicism (i.e. bach - c minor partita 2, or a minor 2 part invention). classical and romantic composers continued using picardian cadenza, but not as often as preclassical ones. 

[stevie]

the most annoying major key ending is in beethoven's f minor 'serioso' quartet, sounds randomly forced after such isnane pathos and fury.

[ahinton]

the most annoying major key ending is in beethoven's f minor 'serioso' quartet, sounds randomly forced after such isnane pathos and fury.

I don't agree with that. I see where you're coming from, but unless you take the progress of the entire finale to be "randomly forced", it is hard to figure what brings you to such a conclusion. You would, no doubt, find the very much minor key ending of Mendelssohn's last quartet (in the same key and to some extent modelled on Beethoven's Op. 95) more convincing - but this would surely be beacuse Mendelssohn's brief is never quite to lose sight of the anger and bitterness from which even the tender slow movement of this quartet never fully escapes. This is very much Mendelssohn's "quartetto serioso", with a vengeance (indeed, so much "vengeance" that one might almost call it his "quartetto furioso") - and if anything could give the lie to the long-established impression of Mendelssohn as a mere purveyor of musical gentility of high technical accomplishment , this work is it.

Best,

Alistair

[phil13]

Even the Baroque Picardy 3rd rule is broken by Bach.

The D minor Concerto is ALL in minor, each of the 3 movements begins and ends in a minor key.

Phil