# The puzzle of keys/scales/modes...



## owildwestwind (Aug 16, 2010)

As a novice in music theory, i am puzzled by this, for example: 

Bach's 1st prelude from the well-tempered clavier is in C major.

Transposed by 1 tone, this piece is now in D major.
The "C" is changed to "D", but the mode of m a j o r remains unchaged.

So, to my mind, there is nothing intrinsic, nothing fundamental that
ties this piece to "C". The piece is just in major mode, and not in minor.

My question is: Am i right or wrong? 
Except for the average pitch of the sound,
except for the high or low tuning of the various instruments,
is there a real difference between C major and D major, 
or between any two major keys?


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## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

Since Bach was using a Well-Tempered instrument, there would be a difference between C and D major.

In Equal Temperament there is no real difference other than the pitch is higher or lower. The relationships of the tones to each other remain constant.


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## Falstaft (Mar 27, 2010)

Argus is right, the only difference for modern listeners is of relative highness/lowness of pitch. Transpositional equivalence is a fundamental aspect of 12-tone equal temperament, and enables all the properties of tonal syntax - superficial and deep - to remain invariant when one shifts a piece wholesale from one key to another.

Of course, for people with astute hearing, either by the gift of absolute pitch or through high exposure Bach's pieces and the keys they're in, a shift of the Prelude from C to another, even proximal (frequency-wise), key would likely be noticeable change, but the intrinsic pitch-relationships would remain unaffected. Similarly, some experiments have shown that you can slowly drag the key of a piece up or down by a semitone or two and by the end the (average, though painfully not for absolute pitchers) listener will not have realized a change. 

There was a time when absolute key associations (C-major = heroic, D-major= pastoral, Ab-maj = introverted) were commonly held to be in effect, and many pieces owe their keys to these supposedly floating symbolic notions. And, the more that were written according to these associations, the firmer (in theory) they became. I think these are mostly rejected now, although idiosyncratic attitudes from one listener/composer to the other may still retain something like cross-composition. Key, as an absolute issue, generally matters a lot more to instrumentalists for whom the sound and technique for playing in various tonal regions can differ widely. An orchestral piece heavy on strings will *sound* very different if it is in G-major than in G#-maj, for example.

Despite all this, I still think of the Bach C-maj prelude as being really inextricably linked with C-major, but this admittedly has as much to do with my own training and personal understanding of the work as any dubious C-MAJORNESS uniquely expressed here.

*I should add one thing. I think Argus and I are both assuming that you're talking about uniform transposition up by a whole tone (two semitones, C-C#-D). If you worded this differently, in which Bach's prelude were to undergo a shift up a *diatonic* tone, then the resulting prelude would sound *very* different, existing in D-dorian rather than C. Nitpicking, but a really important distinction. This actually does happen in miniscule form in the piece's first measures, where the major third C-E is transposed up to D-F, with a minor third so as to fit the scale, rather than D-F# (the "real" transposition).


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

The way I understood it is that major and minor are the only two modes remaining during the common practice era, the others having fallen nearly into disuse in the late Renaissance or early Baroque. In modal music transposing up to D would be a totally different type of scale, something closer to what we would call D minor with only the white keys being used (as in Falstaff's last paragraph). Am I correct in this way of looking at it?


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## owildwestwind (Aug 16, 2010)

Thank you for your answers. 
Falstaft, of course i mean uniform transposition, by 2 semitones.
The whole matter is rather trivial, isnt' it?
I would be glad if there existed real and deep associations
like C-major = heroic, D-major= pastoral... 
How puzzling, such absurd connections resulting from naming conventions, 
because this or that piece happened to be in this or that key!


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## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

owildwestwind said:


> Thank you for your answers.
> Falstaft, of course i mean uniform transposition, by 2 semitones.
> The whole matter is rather trivial, isnt' it?
> I would be glad if there existed real and deep associations
> ...


People used to think like that, associating certain moods with certain keys. Certain keys will still be seen as "different" or "exotic" because they are rarely used, like F# major or Eb minor. The only reason they aren't used as much is because it's very difficult to get an entire orchestra to play a piece with a lot of accidentals. That's why most classical symphonies were usually written in C, G, F, D, or Bb, and why most romantic symphonists still didn't go past 3-4 sharps/flats very often. Piano music is a different story, since it's relatively easy to play lots of accidentals, so you'll see a lot of late Romantic music like Rachmaninov and Scriabin in the more "rare" keys.


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## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

Weston said:


> The way I understood it is that major and minor are the only two modes remaining during the common practice era, the others having fallen nearly into disuse in the late Renaissance or early Baroque. In modal music transposing up to D would be a totally different type of scale, something closer to what we would call D minor with only the white keys being used. Am I correct in this way of looking at it?


Modes are and were frequently used (kind of). The Major comes from the ecclestiastical Ionian mode and the minor from the Aeolian. Then composers decided a leading tone was necessary in minor so they created the harmonic minor scale. Then there was the problem of the augmented interval between the 6th and 7th degrees, so they created the melodic minor scale. The other fives modes did go out of fashion for a while, but came back when more chromatic music became common in the late 19th/early 20th century, which allowed for stranger harmonies (augmented and diminished) by using different modes simultaneously and weird stuff like that.

You are describing what Falstaft mentioned. Transposing from C Major (Ionian) to D Dorian uses the same notes but the tonic and therefore relations have changed. That would be a 'tonal' transposition. A 'real' transposition would just move every note up a whole tone (or down 5). Both are used in sequences and transformation of themes and stuff like that.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

Falstaft said:


> There was a time when absolute key associations (C-major = heroic, D-major= pastoral, Ab-maj = introverted) were commonly held to be in effect, and many pieces owe their keys to these supposedly floating symbolic notions. And, the more that were written according to these associations, the firmer (in theory) they became. I think these are mostly rejected now, although idiosyncratic attitudes from one listener/composer to the other may still retain something like cross-composition. Key, as an absolute issue, generally matters a lot more to instrumentalists for whom the sound and technique for playing in various tonal regions can differ widely. An orchestral piece heavy on strings will *sound* very different if it is in G-major than in G#-maj, for example.


Just a theory (and probably wrong/meaningless): maybe people had better hearing back when those affective key characteristics were commonly held? Maybe there was a greater percentage of the population with some degree of absolute pitch; then, even with equal temperament, each key would sound different. Of course, just _what_ each key (actually, same goes for most programmatic music) sounds like would depend on associations made at an early age. For example, most children's songs are written in C Major, so many would associate C Major with innocence in most contexts. A lot of Christmas carols, on the other hand, are written in D Major, which seems to be a joyful key to many. And G Major has a lot of folk songs, and is thus associated with rusticness. Actually, to me it seems like as good a way to pick a key to write in as any. How do composers who've rejected ideas like these pick their first note?


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## johnnyx (Jan 3, 2007)

I am certainly a novice when it come to music theory but I'll give it a go. I would agree with the original post that any piece can be played in a different key (setting aside the limitations of individual instruments). For example, guitar players can do this by using a capo. I would also agree with the above comments that certain keys have a "feel" or "emotion" that can be associated with them.

While modes may not be widely used in classical music they were fundamental to the development of modal jazz by folks like Miles Davis and John Coltrane starting in the late 1950s.


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## obwan (Oct 24, 2011)

Very interesting. I never knew that about c manor = heroic, d major = pastoral. Mind sharing with us what era this was common in? Also I might point out that I think major mode (regardless of key) being associated with joyful music and minor mode being associated with sad and angry is also probably a connection made by exposoure, there are, however rare, excellent examples of sad music in major key (there are 3 from the marriage of figaro) and vice versa.


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

For people with absolute pitch, note C is fundamentally different from note D, in the same way that red is fundamentally different from orange. Play one note on a piano and they know what note it was. For them, music in C major has a basic C-ness about it. Some people's brains work that way; most don't. For the rest of us, we hear relations between pitches, whether by native instinct or by lots of training. But we might not notice if someone played that Bach prelude transposed into a different key. (Unless the pianist went on to play Prelude no. 2 in C minor immediately afterward.)


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