Klarinet Archive - Posting 000587.txt from 2006/03

From: Laurence Beckhardt <lbeckhardt@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Re: Keys (from Let's get real)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 16:46:21 -0500

"The crap that musicians invent to support
non-supportable ideas stuns the imagination."

No disagreement here, but maybe it's the capacity for
imagination, no matter how fanciful or absurd, that
separates the artist from the pedant.

--- dnleeson <dnleeson@-----.net> wrote:

> My congratulations to Ed for being so right and so
> forceful in
> his presentation on the nonsense of keys carrying
> inherent
> emotions. It was a terrible idea when it got
> invented and it has
> gotten no better over the years. For a while,
> everyone believed
> that C major was "pacific" and F major was "calm"
> and F-sharp
> major was for serious emotions, while A major was
> for emotions
> "whose details are better not to be described,"
> blah, blah, blah.
> All of this was done from whole cloth without a
> single shred of
> evidence to support such doo-doo.
>
> D major was the key for stentorian and heroic music.
> But when in
> a performance of an aria with a high b or c, the
> tenor asked that
> the musicians transpose down a tone, the piece wound
> up in the
> "pacific" key, even though it was supposed to be
> "stentorian."
>
> The crap that musicians invent to support
> non-supportable ideas
> stuns the imagination.
>
> Dan Leeson
> DNLeeson@-----.net
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lacy, Edwin [mailto:el2@-----.edu]
> Sent: Monday, March 27, 2006 11:48 AM
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> Subject: RE: [kl] Re: Keys (from Let's get real)
>
>
> <<<I, too, have heard the hogwash about F major
> being a "calm"
> key, and
> so
> on. This ignores the rather serious problem of
> transposing
> instruments. If the orchestra is in F major, then
> my Bb clarinet
> is in
> G major, my A clarinet would be in Ab major, the
> alto saxes would
> be in
> D, and despite continued research, science has not
> yet determined
> which
> key the french horns would be in.
>
> So, does that mean a clarinet playing in G is
> "calm"?>>>
>
> No, a Bb clarinet playing in its written key of G IS
> in the key
> of F.
>
> We can call the matter of the character of various
> keys "hogwash"
> if we
> want to, but that doesn't negate the fact that some
> pretty
> outstanding
> musicians seem to have been able to associate
> various keys with
> their
> own distinguishing characteristics. I'm referring
> to such
> musicians as
> Mozart, Beethoven, etc., etc. The fact that any
> particular
> individual
> may not be able to hear these qualities, or that I
> may not be
> able to do
> so, does not constitute evidence that such a
> phenomenon does not
> exist.
>
> Ed Lacy
> University of Evansville
>
>
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