What emotions are assigned to Keys?

[hornteacher]

I'm sure this was on the old forum at some point but I'd like to know if there is a list of what emotions are gerenally identified with various keys.

For example:

Eb Major = Heroism
Ab Major = Forgiveness
G Minor = Tragedy
C Major = Triumph

Is there a chart somewhere?

[BachQ]

Well, D Minor is a popular key for requiems, so, arguably, it embodies sadness, sorrow, and similar "deep" emotions.

[lukeottevanger]

I just wrote a fairly long response to the OP and lost it during posting!

The gist is:

1) it isn't just emotions, it is more generally 'states' and 'concepts' that are involved
2) a list can be tentatively drawn up, but it is very generalised of course and
3) also has to be read as a work in progress - i.e., key associations acrue new levels, new meanings, as time goes by and great pieces of music impress their force upon them. For example, C minor took on a new heroic intensity after Beethoven even if its basic association-type remained the same
4) the associations are not particularly grounded in acoustical fact, even though some may have roots in the different acoustical properties of keys in pre-equal temperament tunings.
5) what they are more often grounded in is symbolism, based around the understandable idea that C major is 'neutral', 'pure', 'didactic' or 'scientific'. From this root, there is a basic idea that sharps move us 'upwards' and flats 'downwards' - positively or negatively depends on mode

We had a good, detailed discussion on this on the old board, on the mammoth 'Psychology of anti-modernism' thread starting in earnest here, though worked up to in the pages before in. It's been good to read it again, it was one of the most stimulating discussions I had on the old board. I want to extract from it one quotation I made, from Wilfrid Mellers, a fascinating musicologist who uses these and other similar principles (e.g. the associations pertaining to particular intervals etc. - all very similar to Deryck Cooke's book The Languague of Music in some ways) a lot in his books. This particular quotation comes from the appendix to his revealing book on Vaughan Williams:

In equal-tempered tonality, which is essential if harmonic progression within the cycle of fifths is to be possible, all scales must be identical since each semitone is equal: the emotional effect of D major cannot be distinct from that of C major, whereas the dorian mode is distinct from the ionian mode because the intervals that comprise it are differently disposed. None the less the classical baroque era, in its rage for order, built up an elaborate system whereby the different major and minor keys were invested with psychological properties. There was an acoutical reason for associating D major with power and glory because it was the key of natural trumpets, and a good key for instruments of the violin family to play brilliantly in, owing to the ready availability of open strings. But there was no acoustical reason why D major's relative, B minor, should have become associated with tragic experience, pain and pathos, except that it was the relative of D major and by inference could be construed as its polar opposite and complement. All that matters is that the symbolism of key, in classical baroque music, worked: as the hierarchy of keys on which Bach's Mass in B minor is constructed wonderfully testifies. The Mass is not really in B minor but in B minor and D major, with the latter slightly more prevalent. D major and B minor are positive and negative poles; the subdominant (G major) is the flatter key of blessing and benediction, with its relative (E minor) as the key of crucifixion. A major and F# minor are intensifications of D major and B minor, enhancing joy or pain; E major, being the sharpest major key in common use, is paradisal - and comparativley rarely attained. Flatwards progressions work in similar ways. F major and Bb major were associated with pastoralism and the earth; C minor with human strife tending to darkness; F minor - the flattest minor key in common use - was the key of funeral experience and the infernal regions. And so on.

Although such rigid classification weakened with the decline of the classical baroque and of the absolute autocracies who created it, these symbolic attributes of key were too deeply entrenched to be lightly surrendered. Mozart has his benign G major, tragic G minor, radiant A major, demonic D minor, strifeful C minor, nobly enlightened C major, and so on, used in comparable contexts in instrumental works and in operas wherein words and action offer clues as to their meanings. Beethoven still writes 'dynamic' works in C minor (Pathetique Sonata and Fifth Symphony), benign ones in G major (Violin Sonata opus 96, Fourth Piano Concerto), 'infernal' ones in F minor (Apassionata Sonata, Quartet op 95), and uses D major and B flat major in association with power and glory both natural and supernatural (Ninth Symphony, Missa Solemnis, Hammerklavier Sonata). Schubert composes his final triptych of piano sonatas in keys (C minor, A major, B flat major) preserving their traditional connotations, and continues to write heavenly, or at least Edenic, music in E major - as the words of his songs testify; while his Young Nun is storm-buffeted in F minor. Unsurprisingly, the archaistic Bruckner never abandoned classical key symbolism, though his heavenly regions seem to have risen up the cycle of fifths from E to B and even F sharp major. Tchaikovsky's E minor and F minor Symphonies relish their precedents in the desperations of the past. Debussy and early Messiaen find their heavens way up in F sharp and C sharp major, bristling with celestial sharps.

Clearly the choice of one key rather than another must have been, as the centuries rolled on, an instinctive reflex. Composers did what had always been done,; and in the course of time an audience's respone to a work in a given key would be coloured by its foreknowledge of other, especially very famous, piece in the same key. This is a bonus the composer did not count on, though he may have been glad of it. He chose one key rather than another because instince and precendent told him to. He did not need to think about it, though some composers must have done so more than others....

[hornteacher]

Thanks, that's a very interesting excerpt.

[val]

hornteacher

I'm sure this was on the old forum at some point but I'd like to know if there is a list of what emotions are gerenally identified with various keys.

For example:

Eb Major = Heroism
Ab Major = Forgiveness
G Minor = Tragedy
C Major = Triumph

Eb Major: Heroism? And what about Haydn's famous Quartet opus 33/2 ? I don't see anything Heroic about it.

Ab Major: Forgiveness? Bach had not that feeling in his Prelude and Fugue from the WTC: dynamic, powerful.

G Minor: Tragedy. Well, we all remember Mozart's Symphonies 25 and 40, the sublime Quintet K 516, the piano Quartet K 478. Yes, I believe it is tragic when Mozart uses it.

C Major: Triumph? Oh no it isn't, unless you are focusing in the end of the 4th movement of Bruckner's 8th Symphony. But the extraordinary string Quintet of Schubert is in C major and the only triumph I see there is death's triumph.

I don't believe in emotions assigned to keys.

[lukeottevanger]

Eb Major: Heroism? And what about Haydn's famous Quartet opus 33/2 ? I don't see anything Heroic about it.

Ab Major: Forgiveness? Bach had not that feeling in his Prelude and Fugue from the WTC: dynamic, powerful.

G Minor: Tragedy. Well, we all remember Mozart's Symphonies 25 and 40, the sublime Quintet K 516, the piano Quartet K 478. Yes, I believe it is tragic when Mozart uses it.

C Major: Triumph? Oh no it isn't, unless you are focusing in the end of the 4th movement of Bruckner's 8th Symphony. But the extraordinary string Quintet of Schubert is in C major and the only triumph I see there is death's triumph.

I don't believe in emotions assigned to keys.

I'm not entirely sure about the original list myself, but there can be no doubt that composers did think in these ways, at least in the baroque - we have documentary proof of it. It matters not that acoustically the whole idea is nonsense, of course; the roots of it lie elsewhere and are perfectly clear and understandable.

The fact is that not all pieces in a particular key will partake of these associations fully or even partly, as your examples show. The WTC is free of them, for instance - but then the important thing about this set of pieces, looked at in context, is precisely to show that all keys can now be used to relatively equal, effect, is it not? One would be surprised if Bach, in a piece designed to show off the new usuability of B minor for  instance, would resort to the old affekts, whose roots were possibly also partly in the key-by-key variations of the older temperaments.

So it's a complex issue, with all sorts of byways, cumulative historical changes, special cases, double meanings, individual peculiaritiers etc. But nevertheless - or because of this - it is a very rewarding one to look into.

[hornteacher]

Eb Major: Heroism? And what about Haydn's famous Quartet opus 33/2 ? I don't see anything Heroic about it.

Ab Major: Forgiveness? Bach had not that feeling in his Prelude and Fugue from the WTC: dynamic, powerful.

G Minor: Tragedy. Well, we all remember Mozart's Symphonies 25 and 40, the sublime Quintet K 516, the piano Quartet K 478. Yes, I believe it is tragic when Mozart uses it.

C Major: Triumph? Oh no it isn't, unless you are focusing in the end of the 4th movement of Bruckner's 8th Symphony. But the extraordinary string Quintet of Schubert is in C major and the only triumph I see there is death's triumph.

I don't believe in emotions assigned to keys.

Sure there are exceptions, but the labels from the examples I gave aren't mine.

MTT called Ab Major the key of forgiveness on his Keeping Score DVD dealing with the Eroica.
Speaking of which, the Eroica (Heroic) is in Eb Major, and Mozart used Eb to depict heroic characters in the Magic Flute.
C Major represents triumph in Mozart's Jupiter, Beethoven's 5th, and Brahms 1st.
Mozart called A Major the key of love (mainly because the clarinet, then pitched in A, was associated with love).

I agree in that assigning emotions to keys does not work in all cases, there have been enough documented cases in books I've come accross in which composers have chosen the key of a work based on what emotion they wished to convey.

[lukeottevanger]

I agree in that assigning emotions to keys does not work in all cases, there have been enough documented cases in books I've come accross in which composers have chosen the key of a work based on what emotion they wished to convey.

Indeed. And if the composer doesn't choose the key, sometimes the key chooses the composer! One has to ask why, apart from instrumental considerations, pieces are written in particular keys at all if not for some conscious or subconscious leaning towards them on the composer's part. IOW, why is Sonata X in Key Y? Of course, often the reasons are fairly complex, or absent - but often some kind of key association will lie somewhere at the bottom of it. Examples could be given by the bucket-load!

[Brian]

C Major: Triumph? Oh no it isn't, unless you are focusing in the end of the 4th movement of Bruckner's 8th Symphony.

This surprises me coming from someone who knows Mozart! ... he is the fellow who wrote the C major Symphony No. 41, after all...

As for tragedy, I see C minor as an "austere" sort of heroic struggle; D minor as a cosmic battle between tremendous soul-forces (is there a word for those?); E minor as a resigned, autumnal, bittersweet melancholia (ie, the battle is already over).

Just because something begins in a key, doesn't mean the ending has to reflect that key's nature, by the way. For instance, nobody could argue that Beethoven's Ninth disproves the idea that D minor = tragedy, because the "Ode to Joy" itself is hardly in D minor!

[lukeottevanger]

This surprises me coming from someone who knows Mozart! ... he is the fellow who wrote the C major Symphony No. 41, after all...

On that old thread on the previous board which I mentioned above, during which we had a long old discussion about this issue - and it really was a good discussion, I recommend a look - I outlined 4 different 'types' of association which C major picked up over the years. Rather than demonstrating, as some would have it, that in fact this means C major can 'mean anything' and therefore means nothing specific, I tend to see it as 'micro-meanings' being created from the basic one as time passes. In the case of C major, that means its traditional associations as a pure, open key can be seen to be focussed into various subsets of this association such as...well, why don't I just paste what I said?

The other thing that needs to be emphasized again is that there is more than one association for alll keys. If these associations were a synaesthetic phenomenon then C major, for example, would be the trigger for only one mental reaction. But as it is, C major 'means' much more than one thing, as the weight of music history has passed it down to us:

1) It can, especially to the Classical composers, be an 'Enlightenment' key, or the key of God's/Nature's law - the 'perfect' key uniflected by the various persuasions, passions and perversions of the other keys. Mozart's Jupiter Symphony is a prime example - the Godlike play of counterpoint in the last movement could really only be in C major!

2) It can be a key of simplicity, lines honed to their bare bones. Stravinsky's 'pantonal' music often seems to work around C in this way. Fom a much earlier time, the opening of the Beethoven op2/3 Sonata, with its simple, pure  string quartet lines is another example....but it leads straight to

3) didactic writing....in the Beethoven 2/3 we are soon plunged into arpeggios and broken chords in their rawest, most 'piano lesson' form. Again, a typical type of C major writing, for obvious reasons (see Czerny, Burgmuller, Hanon etc. etc) found wherever you care to look. Mozart's Sonata Facile or JSB's Applicatio, as I said earlier, are obvious examples from hundreds. Just take the example of some great piano Studies: Chopins first Etude is 'just' an arpeggio study in C major, Liszt's first Transcendental Study is a sort of keyboard-exploring toccata in C major; Alkan is typically rebellious in having the first of his Studies in all the major keys op 35 be in A major, but the C major study when it comes is didactic in tone again....another first etude which uses a didactic C major more ironically is the first of Debussy's, which starts as a dutiful five-finger exercise in C before being led astray into various keys; the ending is a startling juxtaposition of Db major scale with final clear cut C major cadence, and Debussy uses this same juxtaposition of keys in his other ironic didactic-daydream piece, the Czerny-based opening number of Childrens Corner Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum

4) C major as purest heaven, blurring/merging into the ether! A different sort of heavenly writing to Messiaen's sparkling sharp-laden music, though - this special use of C major seems to be reserved for equally special pieces. The Arietta of Beethoven's op 111 is the obvious example - the trill garlanded music makes C major something transcendental and also 'opens it out' so that melody becomes harmony, rhythm becomes timbre and and the tonality in general becomes slmost a vibration. If this were the only piece to end in this way perhaps we couldn't say it was anything to do with C major - but one of the few works which approaches late Beethoven in profundity also reaches its conclusion in a strikingly similar way: the last song of Das Lied von der Erde, with its famous fade out on 'Ewig, Ewig, Ewig.....' Here, instead of vibrating, blurring trills, we have pentatonic harmonies merging with one another, and the significance of their being in a sort of neutral, natural C major (instead of the warm human Bb or the funereal C minor heard earlier in the song) is quite clear. A more dynamically-charged ending which nevertheless uses a blurred pentatonic C major for symbolic effect is the end of Gurrelieder, where the C major sunrise is the literal inversion of the Eb major sunset which began the piece. Here the ending of the piece is intended to convey a message on the lines of 'the shadows and dreams of the old world are dead - this is a new, fresh beginning' - so we see that the use of C major in this sense partakes partly of this type of association, and partly of both association #1 (C major = Enlightenment) and #2 (C major = purity and simplicity) as described above....

...and I'm sure there are other such C major associations which I've forgotten! And that is just one key...

One other thing I'd mention at this point is that we mustn't forget the composer in all this. Most people here, understandably, tend to focus on their own experience as listeners, but the composer is the one working with the material and making the choices, and, if they are anything like me, they will be automatically sensitive to these things from years of playing, reading scores, studying etc. I know that, in my own very small way, I am...

[Brian]

Coincidentally, I have heard F major referred to very frequently as the "nature" key.

luke - really neat year-old post! Thanks. I'm going to go listen to the Mozart 41 now... 

[lukeottevanger]

Luke has left little room for more to be said in his posts on this topic. I find the tracing of prescribed symbolism from baroque to Mozart to be esp interesting, because I have trouble thinkg of these keys being rooted in meaning, especially from the view afforded to us from the rounded offtuning of a piano modern piano, as the Mellers quote suggests. I can certainly hear exploitation of slightly off pitches when one tunes in a way to sweeten 5ths and thirds of a particular key.

Reminded also of how in the early days, the pianist was also the piano tuner, and how that tuning might vary to fit the repertoire, and just how some of these ideas of key meanings are passed down, and reinforced by, as Luke says, the weight of history, and of particular pieces that reinforce the interpretation of a certain key, rather than anything intrinsic to the key, like words...

But what conveyance of emotion in herent to the key  is overpowered by the pitch relationships of the piece, where lines fall in the registers of the instruments that are playing them or voices that are singing them.

So here is an alternative assignation of meaning to pitch.
C: greed
D: brilliance
E: selfishness
F: distance, isolation (esp in England)
G: not impressed, or sunniness
A: indifference
B: relaxed, refreshed

Explanation of this available upon request.

Thanks for this, very interesting - and consider that request made!

I do find the way that temperament affected - indeed, Affekted  - key association to be fascinating indeed. However, I think Mellers' point about how these associations were refined, changed and developed for equal tempered music is also fascinating, above all because, as we all know, there is no real acoustical reason to hear any difference between any given equal tempered keys, except perhaps in absolute height. Personally I love the slightly subversive way that ET's crowning glory, this pure, balanced system - the circle of fifths - immediately acquired these quasi-mystical associations! Human need, I suppose. However, they aren't that mystical after all, once one accepts their two basic assumptions, one based on symbolism, the other on fact:

1) C major is pure/neutral - you just have to go with this one, but it's understandable!
2) All other keys derive their character from their relationship, flatwards or sharpwards, to this neutral state - this one is based in the psychoacoustical tensions that result from the relationships between keys in every modulation; the system of key asssociations simply took this audible truth and applied it to the circle of fifths, as if that circle represented a piece in C major itself.

So, for instance, because subdominant inflections tend to have a pastoral effect 'in real life' (think of the subdominant inflection from D to G right at the beginning of Beethoven's well-named-though-not-by-him Pastoral Sonata) the fact that F major exists in subdominant relationship to that reference key C major meant that it acquired this meaning of a kind of earthy, relaxed pastorale (think Vivaldi's Autumn, Bach's biggest and most outdoorsy Brandenburg, Beethoven's Pastorale (and particularly his peasants)). Again, to repeat, there's no acoustical reason for this to be the case, just the composer's subconscious feeling (maybe relating back to their own younger days where everything was worked from didactic C major...) that F is some kind of subdominant. But once it got going, the tradition began to built up, so that really Beethoven 6 had to be in F major!

[Justin Ignaz Franz Bieber]

rostropovich wrote of how he thought of bach's cello suites in the liner notes for his recording of them:
g maj: lightness
d min: sorrow & intensity
c maj: brilliance
e flat maj: majesty & opacity
c min: darkness
d maj: sunlight
of course he was referring to the cello suites specifically but after reading that i've found that i'm always tempted generalize to other works. (things in e flat tend to sound regal/majestic to me now) it's only a superifical thing though, & i know the mode that something is written in determines emotions more than which key.

[mahlertitan]

LOL, this is all relative, you like apples, i like pears.

[lukeottevanger]

rostropovich wrote of how he thought of bach's cello suites in the liner notes for his recording of them:
g maj: lightness
d min: sorrow & intensity
c maj: brilliance
e flat maj: majesty & opacity
c min: darkness
d maj: sunlight
of course he was referring to the cello suites specifically but after reading that i've found that i'm always tempted generalize to other works. (things in e flat tend to sound regal/majestic to me now) it's only a superifical thing though, & i know the mode that something is written in determines emotions more than which key.

Peter Wispelwey expressed a similar view of the suites in the liner notes to his recording - I can't remember exaclty what he said as I lent that setout and never got it back! No, hang on, I've found his website, so here it is in the words of a review, which also compares his interpretation to Casals':

Pablo Casals called the suites "optimistic", "tragic", "heroic", "grandiose", "tempestuous", and "bucolic". Wispelwey, in a delightful essay on them, adds more biographical detail. The G-major suite, he says, is innocent, childlike; the D-minor suite hurt and sorrowful, like a teenage poet. The C-major suite he imagines as a swaggering crown prince, the E-flat-major as a philosopher peering into the depths. The C-minor suite is melancholy, "aloof and threatening". The D-major suite, he says, is innocence regained; the music should defy gravity and dance in mid air.

Note that he not attempting to link the suites to an accepted theory of Affekts, but his interpretation is interesting nonetheless, I think.

BTW, yes, E flat does often have regal associations. Which, one imagines, Beethoven had somewhere in mind with the Eroica (note that the funeral march is in the relative minor, C minor, which as often with key associations is a kind of flip-side to regal pomp - heroic tragedy/strife) and the Emperor, just to start with.

[lukeottevanger]

LOL, this is all relative, you like apples, i like pears.

That is not really the point under discussion though. I refer you to what I said above - this is less about the listener, who can take or leave these associations/apples/pears as he wants, than it is about music history, about the composer's place in this history, and the choices he makes. You can ignore it all and probably miss out on very little - but it is interesting nevertheless, I think, to delve a little into the way the composer's mind works and the way music takes on all these associations, unsuspected by many listeners.

[mahlertitan]

That is not really the point under discussion though. I refer you to what I said above - this is less about the listener, who can take or leave these associations/apples/pears as he wants, than it is about music history, about the composer's place in this history, and the choices he makes. You can ignore it all and probably miss out on very little - but it is interesting nevertheless, I think, to delve a little into the way the composer's mind works and the way music takes on all these associations, unsuspected by many listeners.

okay, this is what i think.

Major keys: happy
Minor keys: sad

[lukeottevanger]

But C = how many Hz? Does anyone account for this?

That's a different issue though. As I say, the associations as I've learnt about them are entirely divorced from actual acoustics. C's associations simply come about because it is 'the first' key. Well, you know what I mean....

I remember in college that some students loved the door that understadning the circle of fifths opened, and so they overexercised that bit of knowledge.
This makes me think of, as a pianist, the dread of treading past four sharps or flats.

Well, there is even a bit of that, in that Baroque composers tended not to go past four sharps or flats, so that, as Mellers points out, that number is the upward and downward limit. Therefore, E major is used for Edenic/Heavenly pieces, F minor for Hellish ones. Whereas, especially post ET, later composers climb higher to reach their Heavenly regions (check out Messiaen and Scriabin particularly).

I don't think - if you are meaning to imply this - that this is 'overexercising that bit of knowledge.' All this is exactly what I've been taught by respected musicologists - not just what I've read in Mellers, but substantiated by various figures with experience in the subject; it also chimes with basic harmonic theory, especially as it was used and understood in the Baroque and Classical.

Interesting to think of the Waldstein in this context, since it is in C, and the development starts off in F, rather than G) (which Schencker said had something to with man (aka Beethoven)  following God's example of the IVI pattern by reflecting that with a I-IV-I.

Well, that is indeed a strange piece in its modulatory scheme. After all, it's already in the dominant by bar 3, before the tonic has even been established as such. It's poised so neatly on the cusp of dominant directions and subdominant ones, it seems to me.

C: greed (Dough)
D: brilliance (Ray)
E: selfishness (Me)
F: distance, isolation (esp in England) (Fa[r])
G: not impressed, or sunniness (So!/Sol)
A: indifference (La as in hoopla, or la ti da) -- I realize nowI should have said A represents a sense of justice).
B: relaxed, refreshed (Tea!)

Well, this only goes to prove how relative all these things are, because England's not Fa for me!

okay, this is what i think.

Major keys: happy
Minor keys: sad

Oh, deliciously witty.    But not really leaving much to discuss, which is a pity, because this is all quite interesting stuff, even if ultimately no more than that. BTW, this judicious and subtle understanding of tonality you demonstrate must really help your Mahler appreciation ! (I'm kidding )

[mahlertitan]

Mahler's music also can't be just summed up by one emotion, try to find one emotion for mahler's symphonies, it's not possible.

[lukeottevanger]

Well, exactly! so Major = Happy and Minor = Sad doesn't help! With regard to the topic, no one has suggested that all pieces in a particular key are permeated by the same emotion. But the fact that, historically, keys had their Affektive qualities which were often kept to is pretty undisputed (we're talking especially about the Baroque here, where the theory of Affekts meant that 99.9% of individual movements stayed more-or-less within one 'emotional state'); nor is the fact that the influence of this permeated into later composers, not all the time, but enough to be interesting, and especially noticable in certain composers, such as Vaughan Williams. Actually, you could do worse than look at Mahler in this way - his 4th, for instance, which has a sort of progressive tonality eventually ending up very pointedly and deliberately in E major, traditionally a 'heavenly key' as I just mentioned, for the song 'The Heavenly Life.' Couldn't be much clearer than that! That's one of the more extreme examples, however....

Edit - not worth a new post, but there are more examples of Mahler symphonies partaking of this tradition. The C minor funeral march of No 2 is, apart from anything else, continuing the line of the Eroica's Funeral March in that key, and surely deliberately (it's too big a precedent to ignore); Beethoven's piece, and his C minor mood in general (about which Rosen says 'in every case it reveals Beethoven as Hero..not..at his most subtle...but..in his most extrovert form...most impatient of any compromise' - see the 5th Symphony or the 3rd PD!), in its turn, was an intensification of the special statuesque, noble seriousness Mozart and others invested the key with (compare Mozart's C minor PC to his D minor; look at his C minor Mass etc.) And so on. I could go on with the Mahler, but I won't, you'll be pleased to hear