# Characters of Different Keys



## Turangalîla (Jan 29, 2012)

I found this the other day and it confirmed my suspicion that certain keys have their own characteristics-D major, for example, is a famously triumphant key, and B flat minor is a notoriously dark one, but what about all the others? Christian Schubart, who wrote this between 1775 and 1790, had his own opinions, but I found that they matched mine exactly. What about you?

And it seems almost inevitable that the whole debate of "music and inherent emotions" will come up again, but I would prefer that it doesn't proliferate _too_ much...


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

CarterJohnsonPiano said:


> Double thread...delete please!


Too late now. Not that I have anything to offer. I don't have perfect pitch and cannot differentiate between one major or minor key, and any other major or minor key. So if you naughtily transcribed a work from G to C, I would never notice.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Ah, just back, and so disappointed not to see any replies on here. 

The difference between major and minor scales is one that strikes the untutored Western listener at once. I can't think of any learned examples, but if you know the folk song 'Cockles and Mussels', you will know that some singers, when they come to the verse about a ghost wheeling her barrow through streets broad and narrow, they shift into the minor and at once a delicious but slightly comic sense of eeriness is sparked off in the listener. 

Not quite on topic, but it is also fascinating to me that in a small place like Europe, or an even smaller place like the UK, there are so many local styles and just the way a musical phrase works will immediately place the tune as Spanish - Scottish - Irish - East European - North of England etc. Now, I know that this is not intrinsic to the actual notes, but rather to our culture and the way we've been raised, but it is still fascinating, and I would love to know more about how these 'musical method characteristics' work.

:tiphat: So please, ye TC cognoscenti, humour me, and post something lucid and informative* on Carter's interesting thread ... 

(*as opposed to my drivel up yonder!)


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Lovely set of links and comments here.

@brianvds says he wouldn't notice if you went from G to C, except that it would sound a little lower. Why should it, if you're working with equal temperament? I found this on the web and like it: "the business of certain keys conveying certain emotions or moods had some merit back when the tuning systems commonly used caused different keys to actually have a slightly different intonation. Today, since we all (for the most part) use equal temperament, where each note is tuned the same distance apart, the differences between keys is fairly nullified."

Trouble is I can't do cents and stuff and psychoacoustics like @millionrainbows, but I think the idea is right.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

C major has six characters.

C, m, a, j, o, r

In languages that use dur/moll instead of major/minor, five characters

C, -, d, u, r


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Aramis said:


> C major has six characters.
> 
> C, m, a, j, o, r


But what you are missing out on with such a strict definition is the human aspect that assigns meaning to those characters, analogous to not counting the rather essential space character in "C[ ]major" that makes it two words.


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## Guest (Oct 20, 2013)

CarterJohnsonPiano said:


> I found this the other day and it confirmed my suspicion that certain keys have their own characteristics-D major, for example, is a famously triumphant key, and B flat minor is a notoriously dark one, but what about all the others? Christian Schubart, who wrote this between 1775 and 1790, had his own opinions, but I found that they matched mine exactly. What about you?


Without musical examples, it's difficult to comment on exact correspondences, and I'm not sure that Schubart doesn't over-elaborate: are there really that many nuances for each key? I wonder what he would have made of music since then that does barbaric things with keys (and without!) - how many more 'characters' would he have had to find.

And yet, of course, I can agree with the basic idea. However, I have found that when I played a piece of music unfamiliar to children, they didn't all hear the character that I thought was there.


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## Turangalîla (Jan 29, 2012)

Taggart said:


> Lovely set of links and comments here.
> 
> @brianvds says he wouldn't notice if you went from G to C, except that it would sound a little lower. Why should it, if you're working with equal temperament? I found this on the web and like it: "the business of certain keys conveying certain emotions or moods had some merit back when the tuning systems commonly used caused different keys to actually have a slightly different intonation. Today, since we all (for the most part) use equal temperament, where each note is tuned the same distance apart, the differences between keys is fairly nullified."
> 
> Trouble is I can't do cents and stuff and psychoacoustics like @millionrainbows, but I think the idea is right.


That was very interesting-thank you for the link! I have always had mild synæsthesia so I could relate to the bit about different colours. However I did not agree with most of the composers' choices...I suppose it is different for each person.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> Hey, what's going on...two threads with the same title!?


Fear not; you're on the right one. The other is an accidental duplicate which will evaporate (hopefully) soon...


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## Turangalîla (Jan 29, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> Without musical examples, it's difficult to comment on exact correspondences, and I'm not sure that Schubart doesn't over-elaborate: are there really that many nuances for each key? I wonder what he would have made of music since then that does barbaric things with keys (and without!) - how many more 'characters' would he have had to find.
> 
> And yet, of course, I can agree with the basic idea. However, I have found that when I played a piece of music unfamiliar to children, they didn't all hear the character that I thought was there.


I showed this to some of my friends a few days ago and many disagreed with Schubart's assessment based on their experience with other pieces of music, eg. the great Mozart D minor piano concerto is very dark and brooding, not "melancholy womanliness". I don't think he over-elaborates, but when you get to that level of detail, it _does_ become quite subjective. I probably couldn't come up with descriptors like "worry about a failed scheme" (G minor), but when I read it I can relate nevertheless.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

I once tried to come up with a list describing the way I thought of certain keys. Of course, once you've made such a thing, you'll try to justify it by fitting whatever you hear into those descriptions. So I don't ascribe any objectivity whatsoever to the following. Just looking it over now I can think of examples that don't fit at all.

______________

C major - Bright, sunny
G major - Joyful, exuberant
D major - Triumphant, resounding
A major - Festive
E major - Tender
B major - Peaceful
F# major - Harmonious, restful
Df major - Earthy, warm
Af major - Yearning
Ef major - Heroic, striving
Bf major - Confident
F major - Contented

A minor - Unyielding, stony
D minor - Stormy
G minor - Cold
C minor - Dark, violent
F minor - Impassioned
Bf minor - Black, depressed
Ef minor - Despairing
Af minor - Resolute
C# minor - Sorrowful
F# minor - Tragic
B minor - Dramatic
E minor - Sad

___________________

I do tend to think of B minor as a "dramatic" key overall, though...


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## Turangalîla (Jan 29, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> I once tried to come up with a list describing the way I thought of certain keys. Of course, once you've made such a thing, you'll try to justify it by fitting whatever you hear into those descriptions. So I don't ascribe any objectivity whatsoever to the following. Just looking it over now I can think of examples that don't fit at all.
> 
> ______________
> 
> ...


I agree with your assessment of the major keys in particular, even though I've always seen C major as a completely neutral sound (think Debussy's étude _Pour les cinq doigts_). With the minor keys I have found that the more complex the key signature, the more coloured the sound. And I think of B minor as a very spiritual key.


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## Guest (Oct 20, 2013)

CarterJohnsonPiano said:


> I don't think he over-elaborates, but when you get to that level of detail, it _does_ become quite subjective. I probably couldn't come up with descriptors like "worry about a failed scheme" (G minor), but when I read it I can relate nevertheless.


Perhaps I should add that what I meant earlier was that _I _can't tell whether the correspondences are right: _I _can't 'hear' G minor just by its being named. Tell me something that is in G minor that I can listen to and I'll tell you what character I hear.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Unfortunately, the body of literature from which those general characteristics are noted / derived has much to do with key choice as per LIMITATIONS OF THE INSTRUMENTS OF THE PERIOD, especially the winds and brass. To accommodate strengths and avoid weaknesses (key areas where intonation was beyond precarious, or where certain notes were "just not available") certain keys were used repeatedly, and in retrospect we have a body of literature in D, Eb, etc. which tends to share characteristics.

From that, even after technological improvements in the instruments, those established key characteristics became somewhat of a "tradition." I.e. "heroic" = Eb. Even those composing solo keyboard music kept to this tradition for a while.

It was all pretty much busted loose by the mid-late romantic era, where improvements in winds and brass changed everything, including the standard make-up of the orchestral ensemble, instrumentation of symphonic works, and key areas which had prior been avoided or considered 'remote.'

It is a tradition all are familiar with and we still often hear works written which followed that convention. Once past the actual problematic play of period instruments in certain keys, it is both a convention and adopted conceit more than an actuality.

Just recall that D minor of Bach's at concert pitch of the time would sound like near C minor to us, Mozart's D minor more like Db, etc. 

It is all relative


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/7687/doctrine-of-the-affections

The subject goes hand in hand with the Doctrine of Affections, part and parcel of the sensibility of earlier eras. Taggart makes the excellent and valid point that up through the last of just intonation, there is a more distinct sound to each key modulation far beyond a transposition of step patterns in equal temperament: then a shift of key area had a truly different and unique set of characteristics. (Sorry, some of just intoned sounds "just right" to me, while even more just intoned music "just" sounds jangly out of tune to me, though I am really only familiar with it via keyboard instruments.)

The convention, then, had a real basis: what emotions were decided upon, again, are subjective, and further we would have to be deep in the mindset -- Ethos -- of the minds of those periods to make any good argument pro or con agreeing with them.

The fact there is a lot of "bright" sounding music in D major (for example) is also somewhat attributable to the people of those earlier eras happening to agree with thinking of D major _like that_.

@Carter: a quick poll of those affected with / by synesthesia would find an array of colors associated by that group of individuals for, say, F# minor (from Naples Yellow to Phthalo Blue), leaving the whole matter in the deepest center of the arena of the intensely subjective


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## Turangalîla (Jan 29, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> Perhaps I should add that what I meant earlier was that _I _can't tell whether the correspondences are right: _I _can't 'hear' G minor just by its being named. Tell me something that is in G minor that I can listen to and I'll tell you what character I hear.


Oh, right, I forgot that that was a consideration for most people...I have been blessed with absolute pitch, so I can hear what G minor sounds like before it is played...


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

CarterJohnsonPiano said:


> Oh, right, I forgot that that was a consideration for most people...I have been blessed with absolute pitch, so I can hear what G minor sounds like before it is played...


LOL. How quickly do you adjust, or is it a tiny bit of a wrench, when you hear a Mozart piece in the lower concert pitch of that era?


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## spradlig (Jul 25, 2012)

Personally, I can't tell one key from another. Maybe some people can, maybe even many people in this forum. But I agree with what PetrB posted (see below).


PetrB said:


> Unfortunately, the body of literature from which those general characteristics are noted / derived has much to do with key choice as per LIMITATIONS OF THE INSTRUMENTS OF THE PERIOD, especially the winds and brass. To accommodate strengths and avoid weaknesses (key areas where intonation was beyond precarious, or where certain notes were "just not available") certain keys were used repeatedly, and in retrospect we have a body of literature in D, Eb, etc. which tends to share characteristics.
> 
> From that, even after technological improvements in the instruments, those established key characteristics became somewhat of a "tradition." I.e. "heroic" = Eb. Even those composing solo keyboard music kept to this tradition for a while.
> 
> ...


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## Borodin (Apr 8, 2013)

It's best to say, although certain keys portray various qualities better than others, we end up tailoring these in a way that fit our own personalities and experiences, subjectively. Ie. if you like gleeful dancing elves you might think a key reminds you of gleeful dancing elves, that being the best association you have it might not be the most accurate. If you don't think dark angry thoughts you might not agree a key sounds dominantly furious, you might think it sounds like something entirely else.

I was testing the different keys and F Major really stood out to me, I noticed others hear it exactly the same - Content, Peaceful, Calm. The fact that I was able to trigger this mood out of all the keys reflects how this system of associations works. It's dependent on the subject. 
Yes, I think this subject interesting enough.


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## Guest (Oct 27, 2013)

Borodin said:


> It's best to say, although certain keys portray various qualities better than others, we end up tailoring these in a way that fit our own personalities and experiences, subjectively. Ie. if you like gleeful dancing elves you might think a key reminds you of gleeful dancing elves, that being the best association you have it might not be the most accurate. If you don't think dark angry thoughts you might not agree a key sounds dominantly furious, you might think it sounds like something entirely else.
> 
> I was testing the different keys and F Major really stood out to me, I noticed others hear it exactly the same - Content, Peaceful, Calm. The fact that I was able to trigger this mood out of all the keys reflects how this system of associations works. It's dependent on the subject.
> Yes, I think this subject interesting enough.


However, whilst I get peace and calm from LvB's 6th symphony (in F major), I get something different from his 8th (in F major).


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