Klarinet Archive - Posting 000588.txt from 2006/03

From: Roger Hewitt <rogerclarinet@-----.uk>
Subj: RE: [kl] Re: Keys (from Let's get real)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 17:14:24 -0500

Oh, dear Dan, your have gone down in my estimation. I experience no
difference between any keys, but I have no perfect pitch. I know
several people with perfect pitch, all of whom say that keys are
different to them. They don't egree about the emaotions for the keys
but they all experience differences unique to them. Synesthesia (no
idea if that is the correct spelling) is scientifically proven fact -
colours with taste, smells with emotions and so on all exist for some
people rare but definite) and pitches or keys with emotive effects is
the most common of all for a significant majority. Boo to you for
dismissing it so cavalierly.

Roger H

--- 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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