First classical Scherzo/Menuetto in contrasting key?

[Jo498]

Beethoven's 7th symphony has the Scherzo in F major. The second movement is in a minor which is often not considered a strong contrast to A major (the tonic of the piece), so the scherzo has the main key contrast among the movements.
Beethoven did put the scherzo/scherzando movements in opp.31/3 and 59/1 in contrasting keys (subdominant), same in the 8th symphony but not in any other symphony and in op.31/3 and 93 they have the position of the slow movement where subdominant is very common.

While a contrasting key (most often the dominant or subdominant or major/minor variant) for the slow movement is very common already in early Haydn symphonies and other multi-movement pieces, I think that menuets are most often in the tonic or occasionally in the major (like in Haydn's symphony #83 g minor G major, the contrasting key is E flat major in the slow movement)

So my question is if there is any symphony or similar multimovement sonata style piece in the classical style before Beethoven and his 7th that has the Scherzo in a contrasting key (and relative or parallel minor does not count, such as the Haydn La Poule example above or the c minor Presto in an E flat major piece as in LvB's op.74).

Even in his later pieces Beethoven usually stuck to the tonic or parallel/relative minor most of the time. Without digging too deeply, I found only op.101 (F in A like in the 7th) and the Danza tedesca in op.130 (G in B flat)

[DaveF]

One that comes into my head is first minuet of Mozart's Haffner Serenade, which is in the subdominant (G) minor.  I'm guessing there may be other multiple-minuet works where one of them is in a contrasting key (although both of K361's are in B flat).  Whether there are any with only one minuet not in the home key is a more difficult one... Even Mozart's Musical Joke, which you might have expected to break the rule, doesn't.

[Jo498]

Thanks. I actually dimly remembered the serenade but forgot to check. As you say one could expect more of them in serenade style pieces with two menuets but it still seems quite rare
There are also cases I would be reluctant to count because the menuet is the middle of three movements and therefore the only possible key contrast. This happens e.g. in the Kegelstatt trio with the central menuet in B flat major.

[amw]

Most of the pre-Beethoven examples come from composers who were still testing the boundaries of the form such as Luigi Boccherini. In a sample opus (six string sextets Op.23, composed around 1776) three of the sextets have minuets in the subdominant, and three sextets begin with a slow movement followed by a fast movement in second place. The 1770s were known for this sort of thing (sturm und drang etc) and Haydn experimented with movement order in the symphonies he wrote around this time, although they have more orthodox key relationships, or rather their key relationships became orthodox because Haydn was more famous than Boccherini.

In the Beethoven generation (so to speak) the first example I can think of dates from around 1800: Jan Ladislav Dussek's Sonata "The Farewell" op.44 in E-flat major has a Tempo di menuetto in G-sharp minor, the subdominant minor. Beethoven's Op.59 no.1 is from 1806 with a scherzo in the subdominant major (which also does not follow typical scherzo-and-trio form, and the key helps mark it further as a departure from tradition). His most radical example is from 1808, still a few years before the 7th, with the Trio Op.70 no.2 in E-flat major whose minuet (Allegretto ma non troppo) is in A-flat major and it is preceded by a scherzo (Allegretto) in C major/minor. In 1810 Dussek published his (multi-movement) Fantasie Op.76 in F major with a minuet in G minor. The Beethoven Seventh (whose F major scherzo leans very heavily towards A throughout) is from 1812. I would point to the date things really "take off" re scherzos/minuets in contrasting keys as 1815, the year Schubert—as a student composer—wrote his first piano sonata in E major (left incomplete) with a minuet in B major and saw nothing abnormal about that.

The only examples by Mozart are minuets in multiple-minuet serenades—the first minuet of the Cassation K.100 is in G major and the first minuet of the "Colloredo Serenade" is in F major, the home keys of both works being D major. Written 1769 and 1774. The Haffner Serenade was 1776 and is also an example. (I'm also not counting cases with a "Tempo di menuetto" as the middle movement and in any case there are very few—even when Mozart does that he's more likely to leave all three movements in the same key.) I'm not aware of any examples by Haydn.

[Jo498]

I should have thought of Boccherini as the most famous menuet is also not in the main key of that quintet op.13/5 is also A major within an E major work.

I was of course aware of op.70/2 but I didn't count this for the following reason although I admit that it should probably count: One of these middle movements stands for a "slow" movement and I cannot decide which one and neither c minor/major nor A flat major would be uncommon choices for a slow movement.

I think Haydn has only a few examples where a menuett/scherzo is the middle movement, the only one I am explictly aware of is the c sharp minor sonata with a central Scherzando in A major. But I have not checked all the early divertimenti etc.

[DaveF]

You could even argue that the G minor minuet of the Haffner Serenade is in fact the middle movement of the violin concerto that makes up movements 2-4, and therefore needs, like the Clarinet Trio's middle one, to be in a contrasting key.  (How could I have forgotten the Trio? - my no.1 fave piece of Mozart.)

[Jo498]

But isn't this more of "virtual violin concerto"? Would it actually have been performed separately? This is a fairly curious case as the virtual concerto is in Gmajor/minor within a D major serenade (remainder is in D major with the second Andante in the dominant A major)

[DaveF]

Would it actually have been performed separately?

Probably not, although it certainly should be, as it's at least as good as any of the "real" Mozart violin concerti.