# Fun and ironic endings and cadenzas in classical music



## Jodles (Apr 1, 2010)

Have you ever had that moment where you, after listening to a piece of work, get sort of a "what was that" feeling?

I was just listening to Mahler's 1st symphony, and I couldn't help laughing a little after the ending of the 4th movement. He builds up to a grandiose ending, massive sound, cadenzas after cadenzas, and then at the utter end, when you expect a long confirming tonic: ba-daaaa (you know what I mean), the orchestra instead plays a rather humble, quick melodic octave, and that's it!

Is it only me who finds this sort of funny/ironic? Any other pieces with a similar kind of twist at the end? 

Jodles


----------



## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

I think those things are present mainly in post-romantic era music, because composers were tired of conventional DA-DI-DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM codas. But how can you end monumental work instead of such cadenza? I guess they wanted to make it striking that they put away this old fashioned way which became too boring and obvious and they replace it with such quasi-ironic and surprising (even if very simple) way of closing all statements included in symphony.


----------



## Tapkaara (Apr 18, 2006)

Does Haydn's Farewell Symphony count?


----------



## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

The pauses in the end of Sibelius's fifth symphony are quite funny, they sound humorous to me. (How did I manage to mention this before Tapkaara?). I find the coda of Beethoven's fifth's finale quite ridiculous too, the way he repeats the tonic chord again and again. In Bruckner's seventh, in the first movement, somewhere in the development section there's also an annoying point when it seems its growing to some dramatic, emotional climax, yet instead it is followed by this silly sounding flute melody.


----------



## Tapkaara (Apr 18, 2006)

Dim7 said:


> The pauses in the end of Sibelius's fifth symphony are quite funny, they sound humorous to me. (How did I manage to mention this before Tapkaara?). .


I have spoken with other who find this ending humorous. I actually find it very serious and final.


----------



## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

The Coda to Alkan Le Festin De Esope is nuts, and you get a nice slap in the face at the end of the piece.


----------



## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

the Scherzo of Shostakovich 5th symphony
the ending makes it all seem so futile


----------



## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Quiet ending of Mozart's 30th maybe. Quiet ending to the 1st movement of Beethoven's 8th.


----------



## TWhite (Feb 23, 2010)

I can definitely tune in on the ending of Mahler's 1st. A composer friend of mine refers to it as "The Apocalyptic Cuckoo", and I don't think he's far off (considering the 'cuckoo' sounds in the intro to the first movement). 

Another one that has a lot of humor to it is the ending of the Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Piano and orchestra rise to a terrifically exciting fortissimo climax, only to have the piano end the piece softly with a fragment of the Paganini theme. Very witty, IMO. 

And I've always gotten a big bang out of the sudden, quiet ending of Strauss' "Don Juan." Especially after what he's been doing with that glorious horn theme.

Tom


----------



## Boccherini (Mar 29, 2010)

Aramis said:


> I think those things are present mainly in post-romantic era music, because composers were tired of conventional DA-DI-DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM codas.


Yes, but why getting stuck on DA-DI like in the third movement of Lalo's Cello Concerto?


----------



## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

Definitely the end of Mahler 1.

The whole last few movements of Shosty 9 are totally sarcastic and hilarious. Those bassoon solos are so tongue-in-cheek, it's great.

I also disagree with the idea that Sibelius 5 is sarcastic and humorous. Were Sibelius to use solid chords for 6 measures instead, it would just seem wrong. Were he to contrive some ending based on the swan theme or anything from the first movement, well that would just seem... contrived. I think that ending is the only one that works.


----------



## SPR (Nov 12, 2008)

Surprised nobody mentioned Haydns Op.33 String quartet... also known as "The Joke"

The final movement (Presto) has multiple long pauses..making you wonder if it is actually over. Almost like he is trying to catch the audience in mid-applause. Funny. These players sort of miss it... they should at least play along with the joke and predend to be done rather than maintaining a 'ready' position. 






"At the end of the Rondo, starting at measure 148, Haydn implements a joke in this piece. It begins with a grand pause that makes the audience wonder if the piece is over. This is followed by a sudden forte sixteenth note in the beginning of the adagio that shocks the audience. After this, the first violin plays the A theme of the opening phrase with rests interrupting the music every two bars. The rests get progressively longer, giving the impression that the piece is over many times in a row, making for an amusing ending. During this time period, it has been said that audiences would erupt in laughter at this humorous coda. Haydn used this coda not only to make fun of audiences confused as to where to applaud, but also amateur musicians who were too "beat-driven," and what he deemed a redundant rondo form. Also, not surprising due to Haydn's witty personality, this is not the only type of humor in the piece: this entire movement is filled with little "jokes." For example, the large dominant preparation over a pedal base in the B section merely resolves to a small recapitulation of the opening theme. This toys with the audience and leaves their expectations cut short.[4] Some may say that the only joke, besides the obvious ending, is on the people trying to find "the new and special way."[5] Others also argue that the adagio is a "remembrance of things past due," hinting at the thought that it is time to advance music to another new level. Nevertheless, these carefully calculated humorous strategies give this piece its title "The Joke."

(from wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_Quartets,_Op._33_(Haydn) )


----------



## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

Oh, SPR just reminded me of Schubert's Trout Quintet... huge false ending in the middle of the finale, so convincing it's hard not to start applauding right there. I got to see a performance at a chamber music festival with David Finckel playing the cello (immediately: heaven on earth), and before the piece began he announced to us the whole spiel about the false ending. When they got there a half hour later, some sorry souls began to clap. Hilarious!


----------



## Jodles (Apr 1, 2010)

Thanks for all the replies! Now I have plenty of music to look into!


----------



## Jodles (Apr 1, 2010)

Lukecash12 said:


> The Coda to Alkan Le Festin De Esope is nuts, and you get a nice slap in the face at the end of the piece.


Thank you! I didn't know Alkan. Like it!


----------



## Il Seraglio (Sep 14, 2009)

I'm pretty sure Wagner and Liszt did away with cadenzas in any conventional sense towards the end of their careers. There is no grand, majestic coda to the Liebestode. You have a crescendo towards the end of the piece that only seems to burn out later on.


----------



## muxamed (Feb 20, 2010)

Prokofiev is the master of irony and fun


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

As for an actual "cadenza" in a traditional sense, listen to Lyn Harrell's ones in his performance of the Haydn cello concertos on EMI. One of the cadenzas in the first concerto actually has a blatant reference to Schubert's "Great" symphony (No. 9), which is quite funny in the context of Haydn, especially since Schubert wasn't even born when Haydn composed it. Like some of Harrell's performances it not 100% "authentic" (whatever that means), but highly engaging & amusing, which (as others above have pointed out) is one of the hallmarks of F. J. Haydn...


----------



## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

Besides the Rachmaninov rhapsody mentioned above, Beethoven does this all the time. The piano sonatas almost often seem to end in either a improvisatory fashion or a shocking 'surprise'.. like the ending of the Op. 31 No. 1 or the Op. 74


----------



## Il Seraglio (Sep 14, 2009)

Sorry for the previous post, seems I got cadenza confused with cadence (only because 'cadence' is more synonymous with 'ending'). Total facepalm when I read the post again.


----------



## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

The most obviously 'ironic' ending I would say is the end of Mozart's 'Musical Joke' (intended obviously as a joke..therefore its ridiculous ending is predictable in a way) in which a colossal false ending shatters the illusion of quasi-music..(or really is this passage prophetic, anticipating Schoenberg 130 years early  )

Sibelius' 5th has been mentioned, which is a classic case of an ironic ending, certainly ambiguous and unwonted, but the best example of an ironic ending in music to my mind is in the final piece of Schumann's Kreisleriana. The piece builds up to a maelstrom of passion, but dies away in almost nothingness, a throwaway ending. Hutcheson describes it thus: "the mystic last number vanishes like a wraith, leaving us at an interrogation mark'. 

The finale of Beethoven's final quartet also seems to be an exercise in irony and obfuscation, with its insistent 'Es muss sein' 'Muss es sein' seeming whimsical yet vehement.


----------



## nimrod3142 (Apr 25, 2010)

If you want to study a fun beginning, look at the score of the Enigma Variations by Elgar, Opus 36. The "original" theme is based on Pi. Yes, Pi, the ratio of a circles circumference divided by its diameter. The common approximation of Pi as a decimal is 3.142 and as a fraction it is 22/7. Elgar has both in his first four bars which are the crux of the original theme. The first four notes are scale degree 3-1-4-2. Easy enough. Fractional Pi is a little harder to find. Count the first 11 notes up to the two "drops of the seventh,." which Elgar pointed out in 1929 when no one had solved his enigma for 30 years. 11 notes x 2/7 = 22/7. Elgar also said there was a "dark saying" involved. Consider "Four and twenty blackbirds (dark) baked in a pie (Pi). Enigma solved. He wrote this piece in the year following the infamous Indiana Pi Bill of 1897 which attempted to legislate the method for determining Pi. Quite ridiculous, but Elgar turned it into a lasting treasure of classical music.


----------



## nimrod3142 (Apr 25, 2010)

One can see the first several bars of the EV by clicking on the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_Variations

Elgar's original 1899 hints follow:

The Enigma I will not explain - its 'dark saying' must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the connection between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme 'goes', but is not played.... So the principal Theme never appears, even as in some late dramas ... the chief character is never on the stage.

In 1929, when he was 72 years old,he wrote:

The alternation of the two quavers and two crotchets in the first bar and their reversal in the second bar will be noticed; references to this grouping are almost continuous (either melodically or in the accompanying figures - in Variation XIII, beginning at bar 11 [503], for example). The drop of a seventh in the Theme (bars 3 and 4) should be observed. At bar 7 (G major) appears the rising and falling passage in thirds which is much used later, e.g. Variation III, bars 10.16. [106, 112] - E.E.


----------



## Earthling (May 21, 2010)

The endings of the first and last movements of Erik Satie's *Embryons desséchés*-- just when ou think its finally over... LOL

Speaking of Satie: the end of the brief opening chorale of *Sports et divertissements*-- this very stern set of chords becoming more dissonant leading to a final foreboding minor chord, slight pause... and a final major third added in the high register. Cute. LOL


----------



## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

World Violist said:


> Oh, SPR just reminded me of Schubert's Trout Quintet... huge false ending in the middle of the finale, so convincing it's hard not to start applauding right there. I got to see a performance at a chamber music festival with David Finckel playing the cello (immediately: heaven on earth), and before the piece began he announced to us the whole spiel about the false ending. When they got there a half hour later, some sorry souls began to clap. Hilarious!


That's hilarious, and I can confirm this! I played this piece with two other students last year and in our three performances we had that problem. I think we tried to start the second half immediately after the first half cadence to avoid the early applause..


----------



## iamkwk (Jun 21, 2012)

What about the ending of Charles Ives' 2nd Symphony? or that of Carl Nielsen's 6th Symphony. Both are musical raspberries!


----------



## spradlig (Jul 25, 2012)

The end of Richard Strauss's _Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks_. After being hung, the ghost of Till blows a big raspberry at the townsfolk.


----------



## spradlig (Jul 25, 2012)

the end of Shostakovich's First Piano Concerto


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

How about the ending of the third movement of Beethoven's violin concerto? Beethoven was having some fun with that!


----------



## mikey (Nov 26, 2013)

Regarding the end of Sibelius 5, I've heard that he was having trouble coming up with an ending hence the reason for the almost blatant hold up before the chords. A thought...

The last mov of Haydn 90 has an amazing hold up in the middle of the mov where iirc he 'finishes' loud and hard in the tonic then after a couple of bars rest continues in the neapolitan! 

The ending to Prok 6 symphony has been called the 'the most unheroic Ebmaj imaginable'.


----------



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

In my early teens I liked classical music, but did not know much about the ins and outs of it. For example, I was blissfully unaware of the fact that with most classical concertos, the cadenza was not necessarily written out by the original composer. I got used to Beethoven's violin concerto with the Kreisler cadenza, thinking of course that it was B's own.

You can imagine my surprise, no, utter horror, when I heard a recording featuring cadenzas written by Schnittke. 

I still think they were thoroughly ill conceived. The funny thing is that I very much like them in themselves, but they really don't fit in with the rest of the work!


----------



## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

A number of years ago I heard a Beethoven Fourth piano concerto played by Frederic Rzewski, in which he launched into his own improvised cadenza (I forget which movement) and it were as if, suddenly, cities were burning. It was great fun, but I'm not sure it was quite in the spirit of the work.


----------



## mikey (Nov 26, 2013)

GGluek said:


> A number of years ago I heard a Beethoven Fourth piano concerto played by Frederic Rzewski, in which he launched into his own improvised cadenza (I forget which movement) and it were as if, suddenly, cities were burning. It was great fun, but I'm not sure it was quite in the spirit of the work.


There is a youtube clip of his similarly insane (unmarked) cadenza in the appassionata.


----------



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

It's funny how perspectives on this change - as far as I know, in Beethoven's own time such improvisation was common and indeed even expected. But those were the days before recordings. We have become used to the idea of a work having a sort of definitive version, namely the version on our favourite recording of it.


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

brianvds said:


> It's funny how perspectives on this change - as far as I know, in Beethoven's own time such improvisation was common and indeed even expected. But those were the days before recordings. We have become used to the idea of a work having a sort of definitive version, namely the version on our favourite recording of it.


I agree. During Mozart and Beethoven's time, improvisation was the norm. I'm sure Mozart's and Beethoven's improvisations were brilliant and absolutely wild in their cleverness! I would love to hear more of this in live performances!!


----------



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

hpowders said:


> I agree. During Mozart and Beethoven's time, improvisation was the norm. I'm sure Mozart's and Beethoven's improvisations were brilliant and absolutely wild in their cleverness! I would love to hear more of this in live performances!!


From what I can gather, today's classical musicians are no longer taught how to improvise. It's a pity, and it is the one thing at which jazz and some pop musicians are actually better than classically trained ones.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

hpowders said:


> I agree. During Mozart and Beethoven's time, improvisation was the norm. I'm sure Mozart's and Beethoven's improvisations were brilliant and absolutely wild in their cleverness! I would love to hear more of this in live performances!!


From a 1799 AMZ review of a piano duel between Beethoven and Wölffl: "[Beethoven] shows himself to best advantage in free improvisation. And here the lightness and at the same time firmness in the sequence of his ideas is really quite extraordinary. B. instantly varies every theme, and not only in its figures. Since the death of Mozart, who will always remain the _non plus ultra _in this, I have never found this kind of pleasure to the degree with which B. provides it."


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

brianvds said:


> From what I can gather, today's classical musicians are no longer taught how to improvise. It's a pity, and it is the one thing at which jazz and some pop musicians are actually better than classically trained ones.


 Yes. It would be fun to hear an improvised cadenza instead of the ones we have all come to expect.

There are other places in Mozart keyboard concertos where the performer is expected to improvise and often these places are simply ignored and the music sounds awkward.


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

KenOC said:


> From a 1799 AMZ review of a piano duel between Beethoven and Wölffl: "[Beethoven] shows himself to best advantage in free improvisation. And here the lightness and at the same time firmness in the sequence of his ideas is really quite extraordinary. B. instantly varies every theme, and not only in its figures. Since the death of Mozart, who will always remain the _non plus ultra _in this, I have never found this kind of pleasure to the degree with which B. provides it."


A different age. Singers and instrumentalists were expected to embellish. Handel singers supposedly went to town with very elaborate ornamentations of the musical lines in their arias.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

hpowders said:


> A different age. Singers and instrumentalists were expected to embellish. Handel singers supposedly went to town with very elaborate ornamentations of the musical lines in their arias.


Alas, Beethoven, the great improviser, helped kill the improvised cadenza. What was he thinking???


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Alas, Beethoven, the great improviser, helped kill the improvised cadenza. What was he thinking???


Well, Mozart composed many keyboard cadenzas too for his concertos-the one's we always hear performed. The greatest "Mozart" cadenza, IMO, is the one Beethoven wrote for the d minor keyboard concerto #20, K466.

So Beethoven and Mozart were both responsible for the demise of improvisation. I kind of doubt that either Mozart or Beethoven would perform those written cadenzas in concert. They didn't have to!


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

hpowders said:


> I agree. During Mozart and Beethoven's time, improvisation was the norm. I'm sure Mozart's and Beethoven's improvisations were brilliant and absolutely wild in their cleverness! I would love to hear more of this in live performances!!


Both composers and other performers were expected to improvise cadenzas -- the big difference between then and these few interesting but anomalous cadenzas mentioned -- the former were _in the style of the composer which was the predominant style of the time._

Now we have cadenzas as historic comment / contrasts, some maybe interesting, amusing, or just outright out of place and out of proportion to the piece as a whole.

Beethoven started the writing in of the cadenza because in his own time, performers were beginning to take liberties, extending the cadenza to such a proportion (even if within the current musical style) as to blow to smithereens the overall proportion of the piece as a structural whole.

The composers could no longer trust the musicians to play a cadenza in good taste or of the right proportion, so the composers 'took over' that area which used to be entrusted to the performer.

ADD: A number of contemporary performers are well-known for making their own cadenzas (appropriately in style) where there is none by the composer, the Mozart piano concerti a prime example -- these may have started out as improvisations, some later written out and 'fixed,' I imagine others still open to some spontaneity in live performance.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

..........................................................................


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

PetrB said:


> ...performers were beginning to take liberties, extending the cadenza to such a proportion (even if within the current musical style) as to blow to smithereens the overall proportion of the piece as a structural whole.


For example, Alkan's totally outrageous cadenza to Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto! Quotes liberally from later works. At 2:45 in this clip from Hamelin. Alkan was a wild man!


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> For example, Alkan's totally outrageous cadenza to Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto! Quotes liberally from later works. At 2:45 in this clip from Hamelin. Alkan was a wild man!


These can be huge fun, 'good music' but no longer at all what was expected, i.e. something within style and proportionate to the movements. Yes, Alkan was known for being very eccentric and quite tongue-in-cheek in some of his pieces.


----------



## musicrom (Dec 29, 2013)

Not to go off-topic or anything, but I swear I've heard part of this piece (specifically, parts after 5:45) in some other piece, and I may have even played it in orchestra, but I just cannot recall. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

EDIT: (referring to Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3)


----------



## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

hpowders said:


> I agree. During Mozart and Beethoven's time, improvisation was the norm. I'm sure Mozart's and Beethoven's improvisations were brilliant and absolutely wild in their cleverness! I would love to hear more of this in live performances!!


Friederic Gulda used to do it and in some recordings.


----------



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

brianvds said:


> From what I can gather, today's classical musicians are no longer taught how to improvise. It's a pity, and it is the one thing at which jazz and some pop musicians are actually better than classically trained ones.


I think this may be changing, at least among HIP Baroque musicians. Improvisation is now a skill that some good music teachers offer.


----------



## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

Thanks for including the detailed bit about Haydn's joke quartet. It is funny, but it's easy to miss that Haydn accomplishes something revolutionary, dare I say John Cage-like, with this ending. By making periodic silence a "heard" part of the musical pattern, he manages to convince you that you're still listening to music when the piece is over. The ever-repeating, ever-lengthening pause for silence gets longer, and longer... until you realize the piece was actually done a few bars back. (Obvs. this can be ruined by the way the quartet acts upon hitting the last actual note, but I would hope they'd play along.)


----------



## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Rachmaninoff's Paganini Rhapsody has a fun ending.


----------



## Whistler Fred (Feb 6, 2014)

Some of my favorites have been mentioned here, specifically Satie's _Embryons desséchés_ and the finales of Ives' 2nd and Nielsen's 6th Symphonies. I also like the bagpipe drones in the finale of Haydn's Symphony No. 82, but then I have an odd attraction to bagpipes...


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

moody said:


> Friederic Gulda used to do it and in some recordings.


Yes he did. I heard him do a Mozart concerto live at a Mostly Mozart concert.


----------



## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

DeepR said:


> Rachmaninoff's Paganini Rhapsody has a fun ending.


That was gonna be my answer  Love the ending to that piece. Surprised me the first time I heard it.


----------



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Beethovens 3rd piano concerto.
Love that ending.


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Yes. The ending to Ive's Second Symphony is rather unique.

As for "fun", check out the slow movement to Haydn's 93rd Symphony with the famous "bassoon fart".
What a terrific sense of humor Haydn had!!!


----------



## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

My favorite example is the end of Brahms's Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 60 - because it so roundly contradicts some of the conventional wisdom about its composer. Just before the end, the principal motive from the finale's theme sounds, tired, attenuated, _tranquillo_, and then in augmentation (doubled note values), as if stretching out its arms in hopeless yearning, each iteration ending in a sigh:

View attachment 36090


Then, two perfunctory C major chords at forte cut it short. This final gesture is almost surely programmatic, and an autobiographical joke as well.

As I've mentioned before, Brahms connected this work to Goethe's _The Sorrows of Young Werther_ in at least three letters, stating, among other things, that the cover should have a picture of a man in a yellow waistcoat with a revolver to his head. Werther blew out his brains so attired in the novel's last pages over his unrequited love for the wife of a close friend - exactly the kind of triangle Brahms was in with Robert and Clara Schumann when he composed the first version of the quartet. The two final chords are the revolver shot and the body hitting the ground or table like a sack of rocks. Given Brahms's general view of program music and the tastelessness of the joke, it is hardly surprising that when he informed his publisher, Simrock, about the new work, he said it was a curiosity with little value, but that he might want to publish it anyway. So, a composer of program music and a macabre sense of humor as well. Who knew?

I should mention that Malcolm MacDonald, in his biography of Brahms, explores the Werther connection with respect to the first movement, suggesting that the heavy sigh motives of the opening are Brahms thinking "Cla - ra, Cla - ra" - which I found silly, but who knows?


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

How about the ending to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony?

It's almost comical the way Beethoven doesn't seem to want to end it.

Sid Caesar had a hilarious routine conducting the ending.


----------



## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

The final chord of Le sacre du printemps spells out the word DEAD in order of pitches. :lol:

Stravinsky was one of the funnier composers for me.


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Yeah but as the Geico commercial says, "Everybody knows that!"


----------

