Klarinet Archive - Posting 000590.txt from 2006/03

From: Adam Michlin <amichlin@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Re: Keys (from Let's get real)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 18:41:45 -0500

In our modern day of equal temperament and fully chromatic
instruments I agree that what Dan describes below is nonsense. Back
in the day, however, I can certainly imagine certain keys conveying
very specific emotions based on the limitations of the instruments
and players involved. As an example, I believe D major as the key for
heroic music stems from it being favorable to natural trumpets and
trumpets, obviously, are favorable to heroic music. I seem to recall
Charpentier's (1636-1704) Te Deum in D major H 146 offered as a
textbook example.

-Adam

At 03:28 PM 3/27/2006, dnleeson 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.

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