The association of musical keys with specific emotional or qualitative characteristic was fairly common prior to the 20th century. It was part of the shared cultural experience of those who made, performed and listened to music. When Mozart or Beethoven or Schubert wrote a piece in a Ab major, for example, they were well aware of this was the ‘key of the grave’ and knew that many in their audiences were as well. We lose a part of the meaning of their music if we are ignorant of their affective choices. Although these characteristics were, of course, subjective, it was possible to conceive of each key as unique because each key actually sounded distinct within unequal temperaments. When equal temperament became the dominant tuning after 1917, the aural quality of every key became the same, and therefore these affective characteristics are mostly lost to us. (See Piano’s Ivory Cage 1) One of the most influential descriptions of characteristics shared in German-speaking cultures in the late 18th and early 19th century was from from Christian Schubart’s Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (1806):
C Major Completely Pure. Its character is: innocence, simplicity, naïvety, children’s talk.
C Minor Declaration of love and at the same time the lament of unhappy love. All languishing, longing, sighing of the love-sick soul lies in this key.
D♭ Major A leering key, degenerating into grief and rapture. It cannot laugh, but it can smile; it cannot howl, but it can at least grimace its crying.–Consequently only unusual characters and feelings can be brought out in this key.
C# Minor Penitential lamentation, intimate conversation with God, the friend and help-meet of life; sighs of disappointed friendship and love lie in its radius.
D Major The key of triumph, of Hallejuahs, of war-cries, of victory-rejoicing. Thus, the inviting symphonies, the marches, holiday songs and heaven-rejoicing choruses are set in this key.
D Minor Melancholy womanliness, the spleen and humours brood.
E♭ Major The key of love, of devotion, of intimate conversation with God.
D# Minor Feelings of the anxiety of the soul’s deepest distress, of brooding despair, of blackest depresssion, of the most gloomy condition of the soul. Every fear, every hesitation of the shuddering heart, breathes out of horrible D# minor. If ghosts could speak, their speech would approximate this key.
E Major Noisy shouts of joy, laughing pleasure and not yet complete, full delight lies in E Major.
E minor Naïve, womanly innocent declaration of love, lament without grumbling; sighs accompanied by few tears; this key speaks of the imminent hope of resolving in the pure happiness of C major. F Major Complaisance & Calm.
F Minor Deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery and longing for the grave.
F# Major Triumph over difficulty, free sigh of relief utered when hurdles are surmounted; echo of a soul which has fiercely struggled and finally conquered lies in all uses of this key.
F# Minor A gloomy key: it tugs at passion as a dog biting a dress. Resentment and discontent are its language.
G Major Everything rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion, every tender gratitude for true friendship and faithful love,–in a word every gentle and peaceful emotion of the heart is correctly expressed by this key.
G Minor Discontent, uneasiness, worry about a failed scheme; bad-tempered gnashing of teeth; in a word: resentment and dislike.
A♭ Major Key of the grave. Death, grave, putrefaction, judgment, eternity lie in its radius.
A♭ Minor Grumbler, heart squeezed until it suffocates; wailing lament, difficult struggle; in a word, the color of this key is everything struggling with difficulty.
A Major This key includes declarations of innocent love, satisfaction with one’s state of affairs; hope of seeing one’s beloved again when parting; youthful cheerfulness and trust in God.
A minor Pious womanliness and tenderness of character.
B♭ Major Cheerful love, clear conscience, hope aspiration for a better world.
B♭ minor A quaint creature, often dressed in the garment of night. It is somewhat surly and very seldom takes on a pleasant countenance. Mocking God and the world; discontented with itself and with everything; preparation for suicide sounds in this key.
B Major Strongly coloured, announcing wild passions, composed from the most glaring coulors. Anger, rage, jealousy, fury, despair and every burden of the heart lies in its sphere.
B Minor This is as it were the key of patience, of calm awaiting ones’s fate and of submission to divine dispensation.
Translated by Rita Steblin in A History of Key Characteristics in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries . UMI Research Press (1983).
What also needs to be appreciated is that the key of X in the "good old days" probably didn't sound like the key X to day. Concert pitch as we know it (440Hz = middle A) is a relative new thing.
Religion is not in any way relevant to the musical tonality, Seemingly this was all composed by a religious fanatic ...
Written in the late 18th and early 19th century from Christian Schubart’s Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (1806) - before todays political correctness.
The inner music nerd in me loves this. I need to experiment with non-equal temperament sometime - pretty sure my trusty old Yamaha S90 has different tuning options like that, hmm....
I played some of this in my head. I will go up stairs and play it on the piano.
But...All of this seems completely subjective descriptions that would not stand up to any sort of standard testing.
Of course I have been accused of playing the devils' music...the blues, so perhaps I am somewhat biased...lol
Billy
EDIT: After playing all these progressions on the piano I realized they all had minor chords. So the word "sad" perhaps could convey some common feeling.
After playing these progression in several different styles at different tempos, I could not find a word or idea that was consistent. My less than scientific test indicated the the definitions given were mostly meaningless.
I can set my digital piano to any tuning but I don't think that will change my opinion. It will cause those progressions to sound differently but I highly doubt the change will coincide with the descriptions. A test for another day.
If you mean that a person has been taught to recognize a certain key to mean a certain thing then that could be possible. I could see how being told that you would be excommunicated from the human race for failure to believe in the true word of the composers could lead you to believe many things...lol
Last edited by Planobilly; 05/20/2103:40 PM.
New location, new environment, new music coming soon
Seize the moo-ment If you feel like you’ve herd all these cow puns before, you probably have deja-moo
We seem to be missing a chunk of our musical expression now that everything is equal temperament. I suspect that "singing in tune" was a vastly different experience 200 years ago; surely there was microtonal tuning in some of those keys. Kind of gives a person the sense that music was more colorful then.
............must have been a nightmare for anyone with perfect pitch, eh?
Love is always worth the risk.
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