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Here is a term paper, dated February 11, 1992. It was written in graduate school and received an A. As with other papers on this site, the examples used have since been lost.

The late string quartets of Ludwig von Beethoven are monumental works in the development of the evolution of tonality in the 19th century.  Opus 131, No. 2 is a movement from the C-sharp minor quartet - one of only two pieces Beethoven wrote in this key.  In both pieces, he chose to open the piece with a slow movement.  For Op. 131, the first movement is a fugue, followed an Allegro movement in the key of D major - an unusual tonal relation to the overall key of C-sharp minor.  The movement is an abridged sonata form, and this is the movement to be discussed in this paper.

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This term paper was written in graduate school, though I think it may have been in an undergraduate class. I don’t quite remember at this point. The class was Music 125 at UC Riverside, and the paper is dated 12/9/1992. I could not find the title page. I’m quite certain I received an A on this one. And since this was 1992 and I had no scanner, my examples were merely copied on a copy machine and glued onto the blank spots - so I no longer have the actual music samples for those examples.

Ludwig van Beethoven contributed a wealth of innovations to the evolution of music. One such contribution was his expansion of the symphonic coda to become an integral part of the sonata-allegro movements.

Through Beethoven’s nine symphonies, one may see a definite pattern of awareness that the composer took toward the treatment of the coda. First, the coda became functional as a second development section. It also became an avenue through which Beethoven introduced new ideas. Another new function of the coda was the extension of the final cadence to a point beyond the recapitulation. This was used in some works to divert attention away from the tonic by actually modulating in the coda. Finally, the sheer size of Beethoven’s codas demonstrates a shifting of emphasis toward the end of the work.

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