# It is less respectable to compose in a minor key/dark mood?



## level82rat

I've seen a few users on TC express their dislike of minor/dark pieces as being pretentious or too appealing to the masses? Is this just personal frustration or is there something to this?


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## mikeh375

It's a load of nonsense, ignore them. There is nothing wrong with minor keys.


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## david johnson

Someone here said that? I missed such foolishness while browsing the site.


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## millionrainbows

Minor keys are_ "the gateway into chromaticism,"_ and thus are responsible for _modernism_. To many conservatives here, this might be justification for the disdain of minor keys.

Also, _"darkness"_ is a characteristic of the _"life is crap" aesthetic_ of modernism.


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## AeolianStrains

millionrainbows said:


> Minor keys are_ "the gateway into chromaticism,"_ and thus are responsible for _modernism_. To many conservatives here, this might be justification for the disdain of minor keys.
> 
> Also, _"darkness"_ is a characteristic of the _"life is crap" aesthetic_ of modernism.


That's a load of claptrap. Pieces in a minor key are found at every stage of the Classical repertoire. I've never seen any "conservative" show any disdain for minor keys. In fact, some of the most celebrated works are written in the minor key, from Vivaldi's Winter to Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor to Beethoven's Fifth, Haydn's Trauer, Mozart's No. 40 and his Requiem, to Schubert's Impromptu op 90 no. 1, Mendelssohn's violin concerto, Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto, etc.


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## EdwardBast

level82rat said:


> I've seen a few users on TC express their dislike of minor/dark pieces as being pretentious or too appealing to the masses? Is this just personal frustration or is there something to this?


Like David Johnson, I've never heard that opinion expressed on TC. Can you cite any statement to that effect?


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## level82rat

There was another example from a while ago that I could never find, but here is one I could:

https://www.talkclassical.com/3727-philip-glass-3.html#post48902

On second thoughts, he's only claiming that it's more susceptible to pretentiousness. With that nuance, is it any more true?


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## EdwardBast

level82rat said:


> On second thoughts, he's only claiming that it's more susceptible to pretentiousness. With that nuance, is it any more true?


I've noticed that some on TC whose favorite music is Romantic Era or later tend to prefer the relatively rare works in the minor mode by Haydn and Mozart to the hundreds in the major mode, likely because they hear in them more overt and intense emotional expression. Mozart's C minor and D minor piano concertos are prime examples. Don't see any connection between overt expression and pretentiousness though.


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## tdc

I haven't seen people criticizing composers using minor keys, but I have seen threads where people are listing their favorite Mozart or Haydn works, and sometimes if people list several works in minor keys they may be subject to a vague accusation of not really being true Mozart or Haydn fans because they probably only like the (less common) works in minor keys.

Many (but not all) of my favorite Mozart pieces are minor key works, and I think part of the reason is there are more harmonic possibilities in a minor key compared to a major key.


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## level82rat

EdwardBast said:


> I've noticed that some on TC whose favorite music is Romantic Era or later tend to prefer the relatively rare works in the minor mode


The Baroque era had its fair share of works in minor did it not?


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## AeolianStrains

level82rat said:


> The Baroque era had its fair share of works in minor did it not?


And the Romantic era had plenty of works in a major key, too.


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## EdwardBast

level82rat said:


> The Baroque era had its fair share of works in minor did it not?


Yes. Much more even distribution between the minor and major modes in every era except the High Classical.


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## Larkenfield

I’m interested in works not keys. If I hear a symphony or whatever it’s because I like it, not because it happens to be in a particular key, either major or minor. I never consider works that way, ever. A symphony that starts out in a minor key could have other movements in a major key in the middle. Often within a work there can be a sudden shift from a major to a minor key, or vice versa. Just about all composers have done this in service of the whole. But what I do is think in terms of moods: cheerful, thoughtful, meditative, introspective, lively, adventurous, challenging — and the keys take care of themselves. Minor is not better than major, nor major better than minor, as both are a necessary reflection of the whole. They both have equal value because they are a necessary balance to each other and they convey the mood of the composer if the music is tonally based. Some music is not tonally based and that’s where it can go into ambiguities of feeling and emotion. But in general, I think in terms of moods and works and not whether they are in a major and minor key. I disagree that one is superior over the other for any purpose in music. They have equal value even if it might seem that one is being used more than the other in a particular work.


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## mbhaub

Is it just me, or are there a LOT of rock, heavy-metal songs in minor keys? Thinking back to the '50s and '60s I can cite very few pop tunes that were in the minor. Eleanor Rigby for one. Those Were the Days, too.


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## ECraigR

I’m not sure why people get attached to attacking certain keys. I came across it when I was a musician and I thought it was weird then, too. Regardless, I don’t think you can say minor keys are pretentious. All keys are just ways of organizing tonality. That’s it.


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## millionrainbows

> It is less respectable to compose in a minor key/dark mood?
> I've seen a few users on TC express their dislike of minor/dark pieces as being pretentious or too appealing to the masses? Is this just personal frustration or is there something to this?


I think there is something to this, but it must bring in extra-musical/social/class connections, which are speculative and unprovable. Since this is on a music theory forum, it's going to attract mainly logical-thinking musician types who do very little reading in areas of sociology or class theory. Subsequently, they hate it when music is used as a metaphor for extra-musical ideas, as if music existed in a social vacuum.

Minor keys have "resonances" of folk tunes, so in this way, they are a product of the teeming, unwashed masses of common folk.

Perhaps minor keys express their suffering better than major.

But also for that reason, "aristocrats" shun the minor in favor of perky, prosperous tunes in happy and majestic major, which better expresses their lack of suffering of "mere peasants."

Purcell's _Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary_ is in a minor key, but that's acceptable as funeral music for royals.

Any other time, major is preferred, as it reinforces the royal power structure. Western tonality is an "ideology" in the service of power.


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## Torkelburger

I think to say a piece in the Baroque or Classical periods (and the more conservative Romantics) is “written in a minor key” is a bit of a red herring anyway, as in most of those pieces (generally) the minor key will modulate to major keys for extended periods of time.


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## millionrainbows

Torkelburger said:


> I think to say a piece in the Baroque or Classical periods (and the more conservative Romantics) is "written in a minor key" is a bit of a red herring anyway, as in most of those pieces (generally) the minor key will modulate to major keys for extended periods of time.


So that leaves the Medieval, late-Romantic, and Modern periods.


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## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> I think there is something to this, but it must bring in extra-musical/social/class connections, which are speculative and unprovable. Since this is on a music theory forum, it's going to attract mainly logical-thinking musician types who do very little reading in areas of sociology or class theory. Subsequently, they hate it when music is used as a metaphor for extra-musical ideas, as if music existed in a social vacuum.
> 
> Minor keys have "resonances" of folk tunes, so in this way, they are a product of the teeming, unwashed masses of common folk.
> 
> Perhaps minor keys express their suffering better than major.
> 
> But also for that reason, "aristocrats" shun the minor in favor of perky, prosperous tunes in happy and majestic major, which better expresses their lack of suffering of "mere peasants."
> 
> Purcell's _Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary_ is in a minor key, but that's acceptable as funeral music for royals.
> 
> Any other time, major is preferred, as it reinforces the royal power structure. Western tonality is an "ideology" in the service of power.


There is no musical, sociological, or historical truth to any of the above.


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## Woodduck

EdwardBast said:


> There is no musical, sociological, or historical truth to any of the above.


With the exception of Queen Mary's funeral, which, as I recall, was a minor affair.


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## Bulldog

level82rat said:


> I've seen a few users on TC express their dislike of minor/dark pieces as being pretentious or too appealing to the masses? Is this just personal frustration or is there something to this?


It's just garbage talk - pay no attention to those who voice it.


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## caters

It is no worse to compose in a minor key than it is to compose in a major key. In fact, I find that a minor key is often one of the best ways of getting a passage to sound emotional. Here is my experience with the tonic note of C, just to show how a minor key can be so versatile and so key to getting emotion into a piece. My reactions when I compose a piece with a certain amount of chromaticism and/or major/minor shifts are in quotes.

Good old C major, no chromatic notes:
 


> Boring. Happy, but gets boring fast.


Still in C major, but adding chromaticism:



> Wait, I have a Bb here. Am I modulating to F? Oh look, I have an F#, am I modulating to G? Oh, wow, an Eb. Am I modulating to C minor? Does it still even sound like C major?


Adding parallel minor, but still mostly in C major:



> Now we're getting somewhere. Yes, the C minor adds just the emotion that I need to make it not sound boring. But it still sounds like it is in C major.


C minor with little bits of C major:



> Now this is getting emotional. Such a variable key C minor is.


Completely in C minor, no chromaticism:



> This is such an emotional piece, surely others will love what I have composed here. So what if it sounds Beethovenian? My melody is still going to be original. At most I would be using a motive from Beethoven to section out a piece. If Beethoven were alive, I think he would be proud of what I did and quickly become my best friend.


As you can see, it goes from being boring as hell to being very emotional, invigorating, and powerful, just by going from C major to C minor. Other major keys don't really suffer from boredom the way that C major does. C major is so overused as a key it isn't even funny. Here are my thoughts on C major and its overuse:

It's one thing for C major to be the most common key in Mozart's era. It is a totally different thing for it to continue being the most common key in all of music up to the present day. There has to be more C minor to balance things out. Or better yet, take your idea in C major and see if you can't make it sound more like the character you're wanting by transposing it to say G major. Just minimize how much you compose in C major. It is going to sound boring if you stick to C major.


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## BabyGiraffe

caters said:


> It's one thing for C major to be the most common key in Mozart's era. It is a totally different thing for it to continue being the most common key in all of music up to the present day. There has to be more C minor to balance things out. Or better yet, take your idea in C major and see if you can't make it sound more like the character you're wanting by transposing it to say G major. Just minimize how much you compose in C major. It is going to sound boring if you stick to C major.


You will actually find way more music in F or G major/minor than in C these days. These are the most popular keys, because of acoustic reasons (you will get too much low energy going under F in the sub-bass regions and these low frequencies are not meaningful musically)...


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## millionrainbows

There is no musical, sociological, or historical truth to any of the following:

Minor chords are a m3 and a M3. The "minor on top" exemplifies a pessimistic view of Humanity, which fits perfectly with the Christian concept of "the Fall" and its subsequent bad psychology. Major chords have M3 on top, which exemplifies a "rising into joy" which is characteristic of neo-cortex "brain death" and the vision of the "great white light," also known as the "great white of destiny" which eats us all up. Chomp. Chomp.


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## millionrainbows

BabyGiraffe said:


> You will actually find way more music in F or G major/minor than in C these days. These are the most popular keys, because of acoustic reasons (you will get too much low energy going under F in the sub-bass regions and these low frequencies are not meaningful musically)...


Yes, that makes sense. There is waay too much low energy going under F in the sub-bass regions and these low frequencies are not meaningful musically, so they have proliferated, as you said: "You will actually find way more music in F or G major/minor than in C these days." It follows, in this musically meaningless world we inhabit. 
But what about the role of septimal whole-tones?


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## millionrainbows

The C major scale can be created by stacking fifths, starting on C, the tonic: C-G-D-A-E-B-F#, and then considering the F# as a suspended dissonance instead of the perfect fifth it really is (B-F#), as part of the built-in structural instability which wants to go to F. Starting from C this way, we can see the truth of Rameau's system: F-C-G is really a bi-directional triumvirate, which includes harmonic relations in two directions. This is also seen in the symmetry of D Dorian, with its D-E-F-G-A-B-C-D counterbalancing D-C-B-A-G-F-E-D, both m2s placed symmetrically: M2-m2-M2-M2-m2-M2. Complete retrograde inversion of this mode was prohibited in the Sun-centric era, as it would cause monk's robes to completely fall down around the head.


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## Zhdanov

level82rat said:


> It is less respectable to compose in a minor key/dark mood?


dark mood is not ok indeed, unless thoroughly justified.


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## Zhdanov

millionrainbows said:


> Minor keys have "resonances" of folk tunes, so in this way, they are a product of the teeming, unwashed masses of common folk. Perhaps minor keys express their suffering better than major. But also for that reason, "aristocrats" shun the minor in favor of perky, prosperous tunes in happy and majestic major, which better expresses their lack of suffering of "mere peasants."


spot on.



millionrainbows said:


> Purcell's _Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary_ is in a minor key, but that's acceptable as funeral music for royals. Any other time, major is preferred, as it reinforces the royal power structure. Western tonality is an "ideology" in the service of power.


well put. John Williams as an example.


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## millionrainbows

Zhdanov said:


> spot on.
> 
> well put. John Williams as an example.


You & EdwardBast should get together...


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