F sharp minor

[Saul]

Mendelssohn's venetian gondola song.
His Fantasi for piano
Capricciosso for Piano.

Rachmaninov's first Piano Concerto.

[Mystery]

Strangely, I used to have an edition of that Gb impromptu in G, presumably intended for beginners. I say strangely because it is annoyingly more difficult to play on the white notes than the black (not that I really want to). As pointed out, the choice between Gb and F# by a composer seems natural in the context he has chosen. Often this is due to ease of movement to related keys and avoiding difficult accidentals. Note that Schubert found it necessary to cancel the key signature entirely for a bar and a half. In F# he might have been tempted to leave the F# standing. I know a piece that seems right in F# - it has a feeling of contentment and repose and also a turbulent middle section, in F# minor.

Then perhaps pieces are written in keys that are easiest to play in... I think it a travesty that this piece was transposed - such sacrilege!

[Ten thumbs]

Then perhaps pieces are written in keys that are easiest to play in... I think it a travesty that this piece was transposed - such sacrilege!

I quite agree. That is why I no longer have that edition. I don't know what happened to it. However, the F# piece I mentioned was in F in the composer's original manuscript and it was changed for publication. Lieder of course often have to be transposed to suit different voices. Some regard this as sacrilege too but if it widens the scope for performance, I'm all for it. That's the answer! Transpose any minor key vocal work you wish into F#! I'm sure your singers will love struggling to reach those notes.

[Larry Rinkel]

Luke makes many plausible points, but the situation isn't as clear-cut as all that, methinks. We all know that following the Mozart C minor concerto and sonata, as well as Beethoven's 5th, one could scarcely write a C minor piece without doing something doom-laden and tragic, and this goes for Brahms, Bruckner, Chopin, R. Strauss (Metamorphoses), etc. But are "doom-laden and tragic" attributes of the key itself, or simply an associative tradition that follows some particularly influential examples? Nothing doom-laden and tragic in Bach's C minor preludes/fugues from either book of the WTC.

I tend to think choice of key has at least as much to do with instrumental properties and ranges as any poetic or metaphoric association with the key. The Appassionata needed to be written in F minor because that fit the range of Beethoven's fortepiano, and once the music occurred to him in that tonality, he devised musical shapes that would fit the hand well using that key. But if Beethoven's piano were tuned to equal temperament and he had one more semitone lower at the time, I don't think it would have made much difference if he had written the piece in E minor. When Beethoven arranged the E major sonata op. 14/1 for quartet, he didn't hesitate to change the tonality to F - because in this way the cello could take the dominant note of the key. Bach wrote the same piece of music for solo violin, as the prelude to the E major partita, and also in D major as the sinfonia to cantata 29 with trumpets and drums - because the crooks for trumpets were most reliable in D major and C major; hence their association with festive music in Bach. Violin concertos are often in G, A, and especially D, because these keys give most opportunity for sonorous multi-stops using open strings. When equal temperament comes in, Chopin starts using multiple sharp and flat keys more often than ever before, because the combination of white and black keys is more comfortable for the hand (he always taught the scale of B major first to piano students).

As for Luke's assertion that "G flat, associatively, is a very relaxed, luxuriant key - and this fits perfectly the velvety, 'deep' nature of this particular piece under the fingers," that's fine for that Schubert impromptu, but there's nothing relaxed or velvety about Chopin's Black Key Etude in G flat or his Butterfly Etude in the same key. By Luke's logic those pieces ought to have been notated in F# if anything. But to pinpoint a fixed character for any key works only half-way, in my opinion. Is F major the pastoral key; and if so, how does one explain the 8th symphony of Beethoven as well as the 6th, or the op. 135 quartet? Beethoven called B minor the "black key," and that suits the Agnus of the Missa, but hardly the B minor bagatelle from op. 126. This business of key association works when it works, but breaks down pretty readily when it does not, and more practical considerations have to be taken into account as much as anything when a composer considers tonality.

[lukeottevanger]

Luke makes many plausible points, but the situation isn't as clear-cut as all that, methinks. We all know that following the Mozart C minor concerto and sonata, as well as Beethoven's 5th, one could scarcely write a C minor piece without doing something doom-laden and tragic, and this goes for Brahms, Bruckner, Chopin, R. Strauss (Metamorphoses), etc. But are "doom-laden and tragic" attributes of the key itself, or simply an associative tradition that follows some particularly influential examples? Nothing doom-laden and tragic in Bach's C minor preludes/fugues from either book of the WTC.

I tend to think choice of key has at least as much to do with instrumental properties and ranges as any poetic or metaphoric association with the key. The Appassionata needed to be written in F minor because that fit the range of Beethoven's fortepiano, and once the music occurred to him in that tonality, he devised musical shapes that would fit the hand well using that key. But if Beethoven's piano were tuned to equal temperament and he had one more semitone lower at the time, I don't think it would have made much difference if he had written the piece in E minor. When Beethoven arranged the E major sonata op. 14/1 for quartet, he didn't hesitate to change the tonality to F - because in this way the cello could take the dominant note of the key. Bach wrote the same piece of music for solo violin, as the prelude to the E major partita, and also in D major as the sinfonia to cantata 29 with trumpets and drums - because the crooks for trumpets were most reliable in D major and C major; hence their association with festive music in Bach. Violin concertos are often in G, A, and especially D, because these keys give most opportunity for sonorous multi-stops using open strings. When equal temperament comes in, Chopin starts using multiple sharp and flat keys more often than ever before, because the combination of white and black keys is more comfortable for the hand (he always taught the scale of B major first to piano students).

As for Luke's assertion that "G flat, associatively, is a very relaxed, luxuriant key - and this fits perfectly the velvety, 'deep' nature of this particular piece under the fingers," that's fine for that Schubert impromptu, but there's nothing relaxed or velvety about Chopin's Black Key Etude in G flat or his Butterfly Etude in the same key. By Luke's logic those pieces ought to have been notated in F# if anything. But to pinpoint a fixed character for any key works only half-way, in my opinion. Is F major the pastoral key; and if so, how does one explain the 8th symphony of Beethoven as well as the 6th, or the op. 135 quartet? Beethoven called B minor the "black key," and that suits the Agnus of the Missa, but hardly the B minor bagatelle from op. 126. This business of key association works when it works, but breaks down pretty readily when it does not, and more practical considerations have to be taken into account as much as anything when a composer considers tonality.

Well, of course there's lots of sense here, and the last bit about practical considerations coming first (though it doesn't apply to all composers) ought to be underlined. But I think there is a misconception (or perhaps only a mis-implication) here and elsewhere, that there is only a single association per key (or at most only a small number) when in fact, IMO, there is often quite a large network of related associations which vary and fluctuate, moreover, over time and genre. My description of G flat as relaxed, velvety etc., obviously cannot apply to very fast pieces like these Chopin etudes, as Larry points out; but a related association - a kind of relaxed, easy-flowing virtuosity, does fit....but more of that below. Again, on the previous incarnation of GMG, or maybe months ago on this one, in a similar discussion, I took the key of C major as an example, and waffled on about the various extrapolations and interpretations of its basic association - 'pure' - as seen in dozens and dozens of works. I'll root it out, perhaps. The implication that those who are more convinced by the 'key association' idea are rigidly applying only one concept to each key is not accurate - or if there are those who do that, quite wrongly IMO, I am certainly not one of them.

So, to take Larry's examples one by one

1) the WTC - this is often raised by people who wish to point to works which don't fit the associations. But I think:
   a) there are plenty of pieces in the WTC which fit the associations like a glove (WTC I in C major, for a start, as a perfect example!)
   b) associations grow and diversify over time: we can't expect a C minor prelude by Bach to have the same tone as C minor Beethoven (which I wouldn't characterise as tragic and doom-laden but as something more heroic - C minor as opposed to D minor) and C minor Mozart, because as Larry himself says, that tone was pretty- much invented by the latter two. Nevertheless, we do find that the C minor preludes and fugues of the WTC represent a kind of 'flip-side' of the C major P+Fs - a kind of neutral pattern making, when compared with the more eccentric works in more distant keys; this is another association which C minor carries, in addition to the 'tragic' one - I repeat, there is more than one association per key; it varies through history and from one type of piece to another.
   c) the WTC was composed in part (though that is a different discussion) to illustrate the equality of keys under (something approaching) ET; rigorously sticking to established associations (built up in part because of the stresses and strains of pre ET tunings) would not really be in keeping with its quasi-Enlightenment spirit.

2) and of course, whether one sees one association of C minor as doom-laden and tragic or (as I do) as something slightly different, no one would claim that this association is inherent in the key, and I hope I've made that clear before. The fact that the associations are rooted in the psychology of the composer doesn't make them less interesting, though, IMO. More so, if anything.

3) I find this Appassionata theory uncomfy - that it is only in F minor because that key makes it fit Beethoven's piano. It rests on the assumption that either
   a) the piece came to Beethoven fully-formed in every respect (including highest and lowest notes), but without key attached; Beethoven then fitted it to F minor at a later point. But this simply isn't how composing works - the key tends to come first of all, almost.

or

   b) that Beethoven wrote the whole piece in another key and then transposed it to F minor to make it fit (we know from his other works that he was quite unlikely to do that, at least in keyboard writing, where he could often be either idealistic, writing notes that weren't there, or simply pragmatic, missing out th notes of a pattern such as descending octaves that weren't on his keyboard )

Much easier to believe, for me, is that the sense of an F minor piece, stormy and intense, came first, and that Beethoven fashioned his keyboard writing, highest and lowest notes etc, to fit with this. This piece, FWIW, is a locus classicus of F minor associative writing if one takes a Mellersian view of things!

4) The arrangement of the E major sonata into an F major quartet. Now this is something like my 3 b) above would have been - a pre-written piece transposed so as to be playable. But in this case he is creating a new work, not transposing-as-he-writes. Writing a quartet - music for public consumption - practical matters come before idealism; without the transposition, the piece can't be arranged; with it, it can. The original piece is a fairly good example of E major association, but particularly, a good example of C major association (in the development section)

5) The Chopin G flat examples (from the studies). This is what I mean by there being families of associations. Quite obviously when I talked about G flat's being velvety, luxurious etc. I couldn't have been talking about its use in fast pieces of this sort; I was comparing like with like, slow with slow (Schubert Impromptu with Schubert Sonata with Schumann Romanze with Messiaen Regard with Debussy Moonlight). I don't have a unified theory about these things, and in this case I'm only talking about how I perceive things, but to me fast music in G flat like these Chopin studies tends towards a sort of feathery lightness, a kind of easy floating over the keys (which is perhaps the sped-up version of the velvety luxury  of slow G flat), whereas fast music in F sharp tends towards glitter and sparkle. These two Chopin studies certainly do glitter and sparkle, but the me the most noticable thing about them technique-wise (and I'm not the only one to note it) is their ease under the fingers, a kind of little-effort-for-lots-of-effect, which fits the ease of G flat well; the fingers glide close to the keys, and the glitter is somewhat subdued because of it. To reverse the question, I'd ask Larry why he thinks Chopin chose G flat instead of F sharp for these pieces: what was the reason that swung his decision? I can't believe he flipped a coin....

I know there's a danger of it - I really don't want to appear dogmatic or obsessive about this issue. I just believe that it is very interesting, and that we ought to be eager to think about why composers made the decisions they did. It tells us so much about they way they saw their own music, I think. Though Larry is very right to point out examples of practical matters taking precedence over key association - examples of pieces written in one key being transposed into another for performance by different instruments - to me this is a surface issue, easily seen, understood and explained, but not in itself telling us anything revealing about the music or the composer.

[lukeottevanger]

Sorry to bang on about it - I just don't think I'm very good at explaining my thoughts here!

I want to clarify something: I said that each key has a network of associations which a composer might (or indeed might not) choose to follow. But those associations do usually boil down to a common denominator.

So, in the case of C major, that common denominator is 'neutrality', but the associations derived from that may be things such as 'purity', 'divinity', ' didacticism', 'science' and many more besides.

In the case of G flat major, the common denominator is something like along the lines of 'relaxed' or 'comfy'. The important thing, though, is that like other key associations this idea melds itself to the music it is part of, in the real world. It is easy to see that a slow piece like the Schubert Impromptu we were discussing fits this definition, but we don't tend to link the idea of 'relaxedness' with speed, hence Larry's observation that the two Chopin studies don't fit. However, it seems to me that if you are going to apply this idea of 'relaxedness' or 'comfiness' to an extremely fast piece, I can only imagine it turning out like these two pretty rare and peculiar pieces - rare and peculiar because they are so deeply comfy and even (relatively) relaxing to play (unusually among the Chopin studies).

I will freely point out, though, that the Chopin's F sharp Prelude seems to me very like a G flat piece; perhaps he chose this key signature because this rather exalted piece occurs like a high point, a point of stillness halfway through the cycle, before the sudden and literal plunge into flat keys with the rather extraordinary E flat minor piece, precursor to the B flat minor Sonata's last movement. Whatever the reason, he must have had one - and this question itself is what I find most interesting. If we knew the answer, we would know more about Chopin and about this piece.

[BachQ]

A composer undertakes a multifactor optimization when selecting the key for any given composition .......

[Scott]

If I'm not mistaken, Mozart wrote only one work in F# minor, and that's the Adagio (middle movement) of his Piano Concerto in A Major, K488. And it's one of the most sublime things he ever wrote IMHO.

[orbital]

Scarlatti is the clear winner with 5 sonatas in F sharp minor. With 550 or so sonatas, the average number for every key should be around 23, but still 

[Cato]

Larry Rinkel mentioned in passing the problem of Tuning: our F# minor is not quite the same as 200-250 years ago.


See e.g.:

By Beethoven's day, the concept of " Key Character " (in which different keys conveyed specific emotional meanings), was much refined. A widely read and influential list of keys and their affective qualities, written by Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart and published posthumously in 1806, contained the fashionable descriptions for all major and minor keys. In this list, he describes the "character" of keys thusly:

"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." "E major. Noisy shouts of joy, laughing pleasure and not yet complete, full delight lies in E major." "C# minor. Penitential lamentation;.......sighs of disappointed friendship and love lie in its radius." "C major is completely pure. Its character is: innocence, simplicity, naivety, children's talk."

These were descriptions for audiences that expected and wanted to be emotionally moved. Modern sensibilities don't provide the context for quite that much scenery in music today, and modern atonal tuning has provided little key character for at least a century. However, we can still be affected by the composer's use of dissonance and harmony, if the contrasts are there.

http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html

[snyprrr]

On the guitar, f#minor is one of the "heaviest" keys, as in "rockin dude". Much evil metal music can be generated here, because of the open E string behind it.

But when I went to classical music, I found that this concept did not seem to translate. I sSOUGHT OUT f#minor, but when I found her, I was disappointed. It seems f#minor is sooo heavy that the classical guys want to make it as light and elusive as possible. Examples:

Zemlinsky SQ No.2 (I believe)
Schoenberg SQ NO.2
Myaskovsky SQ NO.8
there IS a Haydn SQ (right after 7 Last Words?)
and either Boccherini or Albrechtsberger have an SQ, I believe.

I suppose it is because these instruments are tuned differently, but, for me, f#minor just doesn't translate in this medium. Maybe d minor/
a minor is the "f#minor" of the classical world.

There is a lot of angst surrounding d minor in the classical world (whereas in guitar music, d minor is a relatively docile key).

so, yea, I was deceived by my ignorance.

A guy I know run a karaoke on sat. He was going to sing "Let IT BE", a song perfect for Paul McCartney's range, but not for this guy. From previous experience, I knew it would be too high for him, so I got him to "raise" the song 3 steps (I don't know what key, unimportant). He began singing, and it worked, but then he raised it 1 more (to 4+) and he really hit the pocket. Sounded like the song was written for him.

Does this example make sense? How does this relate to the general topic at hand?

[greg]

hm, F# is a very, very awkward key to play in for guitar, unless it's non-standard tuning. I don't know, maybe there are a lot of metal bands that do this. The most common tunings for metal I know of are Drop D if it's a six string and some use standard tuning for a seven string, which would be in B.

[snyprrr]

Strange, I find f# minor easy since it's relative major is A, a fairly open key on a guitar. Are you talking about F# Major? THAT is awkward on a guitar.

Drop-D and 7str. is a whole other thing. I'm simply talking about how on a guitar, f# minor occupies that 2nd fret position, allowing for the whole step down to the open E on the 6th string. Actually, f# minor WAS the old Drop-D before Drop-D became Drop-D. You get what I'm saying with the whole tone? f# minor certainly loses its basic MO in Drop-D tuning.

For me on the guitar, f# minor is a Tragic/Drammatic/Heroic key only equalled by b minor, though I find b minor ONLY Tragic.

[greg]

Strange, I find f# minor easy since it's relative major is A, a fairly open key on a guitar. Are you talking about F# Major? THAT is awkward on a guitar.

Drop-D and 7str. is a whole other thing. I'm simply talking about how on a guitar, f# minor occupies that 2nd fret position, allowing for the whole step down to the open E on the 6th string. Actually, f# minor WAS the old Drop-D before Drop-D became Drop-D. You get what I'm saying with the whole tone? f# minor certainly loses its basic MO in Drop-D tuning.

For me on the guitar, f# minor is a Tragic/Drammatic/Heroic key only equalled by b minor, though I find b minor ONLY Tragic.

Yeah, I must've been thinking of F# maj. I wonder how many guitarists have even mastered that? (can't say that's the easiest key for me to improvise in  )

I see what you mean....

[Herman]

I had not read this topic before.

I do not know what compelled Luke and Larry to tune out of GMG but obviously their contributions are STELLAR.

[Maciek]

They both have new accounts under different names.

[Herman]

  Such as?

[Brian]

They both have new accounts under different names.

Hmmm ... I knew Luke did, didn't know about Larry.

[Maciek]

Such as?

Well, I'm not really allowed to say. I don't have their permission and there might be a reason why they decided to change their names when re-registering (I don't know).

[sul G]

In my case, just for the hell of it, no other reason. (I'm Luke, btw, Herman  )