Re: F_minor...

[Michael Arnowitt <arnowitt@sover.net>]

At 05:39 PM 2/22/99 -0700, jerry and judy <jerbidoc@zianet.com> wrote:
>
>I think this came out in an interview once, but I don't how serious he was.
>What is meant by a performer's favorite key?  I play a lot and I don't have
>one.  Maybe I should?  Do listeners have favorite keys?
>
>...
>
>It makes sense for composers to be partial to certain keys, because of
>certain musical technicalities or even personal experiences with specific
>keys.  Beethoven's use of Cm and Mozart's use of Gm and Dm was more of a
>saving or a reserving of these keys for certain characteristic works.
>

>
>Jerry
>
>

It's more than musical technicalities and past experience.  I didn't even
know this myself until a couple of years ago -- and I've been a pianist for
30 years --, but it turns out that until about 1918 or so, keys really did
sound different, even on a piano.

A well-tempered tuning (as in Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier") is just a
tuning system that allows you to play reasonably well in tune in all keys --
but this doesn't mean it's all symmetrical; the distance from C to E, for
example, wasn't the same as from E to G#, even though they're both major thirds.

Today we use "equal temperament," where all half-steps, etc. are
mathematically equal, so now all keys are identical except for starting
pitch level.  But back then a well-tempered tuned piano really would give
different keys different "colors."  The tuning system was generally set up
so that simpler keys (C major, for example) would have purer, more
natural-sounding intervals.  Keys with large numbers of sharps or flats were
spicier (think of some of the music in Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I - Eb
minor and Bb minor - intense music; it's no accident Bach set them in those
keys with lots of flats.)  In some historical tunings I have heard, you can
really tell a difference between sharp keys and flat keys due to the
asymmetries of these "well-temperaments."

So it wasn't just Beethoven that associated C minor with stormy music - it
may have been inherent in the tuning system of his time.  Music that was
"chromatic" (had more funky notes tuning-wise) - the word chromatic itself
comes from Greek "chroma," color.  The different keys had different colors.
I have heard a piano tuner tell me of hearing a performance of Bach's WTC on
a historical tuning, and how it was an extraordinary eye-opener for him
about this music.

That aside, even on a modern piano with equal temperament many of us have
psychological leanings to certain keys.  My favorite is A major.

Michael