Yuri questions my teacher's observation that there is more music written
in the minor mode:

>This sounds wrong to me.  Are you aware of any actual statistic? If I were
>to bet, I would bet on the opposite, that there is more major-mode tonal
>music than minor-mode.

>Off the top of my head, JS Bach's works are probably equally divided
>between major-minor (may be a slight difference in favor of minor),
>Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven (also Schubert?) are overwhelmingly major, of
>the romantics, Brahms is major-heavy, Schumann and Chopin may be not as
>much, but again I'd be surprised if they are minor-heavy.

Maybe true, but take away the obligatory minuets, trios, and firework
finales and look at the "profound" moments of these works--the slow mov'ts
for instance--and a quick look in my collection yields more minor-key
signatures.  Later, when composers wanted every mov't to be "say
something," all off a sudden there's minor-key stuff going on all over
the place.

Which makes me wonder about the "profundity" of happy music.

Take Allen's comment:

>But for those of us who hold the view of the human condition I have
>described, the view Ayn Rand called "the benevolent universe premise", that
>makes us treasure all the more great music which is also deeply triumphant,
>and joyous, or which preserves positive sensitivies in the face of struggle
>and pain and grief, music which speaks to the glory of the human
>"condition".

But triumphance is only be measured by the hell that came before it.
I like happy music--Copland, Martinu, Haydn; but they can't generate the
respect that the towering geniuses receive because the later realize that
glory is hard-won and short-lived.  It's not that our day-to-day life isn't
typcally happy and enriching, it's just that we have the dubious honor as
humans to be the only creatures aware of our own impending doom.

John "won't be going gently into that good night" Smyth