Key and Character
Tue, Jan 22 2013, 11:51AM
#2
RE: Key and Character
Essentially the problem we are discussing cannot be resolved because we are talking about not only differences in the music, but in the perception of the music by individual listeners.
The Mozart example that we will soon be listening to may prove interesting. There are clear, demonstrable differences between the different tunings, but will it sound different? Everyone will be able to decide for himself, Every pair of ears, each brain, is different. And then the Haas piece.
In the meantime, Mr Playwright-Philosopher, please consider: just because you can't hear it doesn't mean there is nothing to be heard! So it's no good trying to tell me what I (or anyone else but yourself) can or cannot hear. We're all different: and we don't even have anyone amongst us with perfect pitch (yes it does exist).
Chris
Tue, Jan 22 2013, 6:34PM
#3
RE: Key and Character
Essentially the problem we are discussing cannot be resolved because we are talking about not only differences in the music, but in the perception of the music by individual listeners.
In the meantime, Mr Playwright-Philosopher, please consider: just because you can't hear it doesn't mean there is nothing to be heard! So it's no good trying to tell me what I (or anyone else but yourself) can or cannot hear. We're all different: and we don't even have anyone amongst us with perfect pitch (yes it does exist).
Chris
We can all perceive things differently. We can all look at a rock and see differnt things. That doesn't mean however that all these things are true. The mass of the rock will remaim constant who ever looks at the rock. A person of great religious faith may look at the rock whilst going through some personal trauma and say 'I saw this rock that looks like jesus crying, real tears came out of it'. Of course the rock doesn't look like jesus and of course it didn't cry. So you look at this person with bewilderment and a little sympathy. You of course cannot see me looking at you so this will have to do. :-[ I'm lying on my side but I feel your pain.
Tue, Jan 22 2013, 12:53PM
#4
RE: Key and Character
A question that does occur to me is why I do not have this association when it comes to tones, but I do have it when it comes to colours... The emotional impact of, say, Picasso's La Celestina would be entirely different if it were red, or even if it were another shade of blue. Why does 'transposing' change the character of a painting for me, yet not a piece of music?
Tue, Jan 22 2013, 1:31PM
#5
RE: Key and Character
uuuum, interesing point. Try and rid yourself of this strange colour prejudice and the next time you are driving down the road imagine red to be green and vice versa. Post the results on here.
Tue, Jan 22 2013, 4:16PM
#6
RE: Key and Character
Brumas, the analogy with colours and key is not correct. The colour in visual Arts is equivalent to orchestration, not the keys. A concert for violin, performed on cello, is an altogether other "colour" in music. A choral work for female chorus, performed by a male one, is a completely different "shade" of the same vocal thing.
The key, as I have already mentioned, is the identity of the work, not only or simply the colour. As the identity, one has to recognise its function, properties and even its character in shaping the work. Finally, by changing the key, it is not sure we can make exactly the same modulations, use the same orchestration, keep even the same tempi, structure, etc. (e.g., is it ever possible to transpose the whole Beethoven's Fifth in e minor?).
Parla
Tue, Jan 22 2013, 6:29PM
#7
RE: Key and Character
Brumas, the analogy with colours and key is not correct. The colour in visual Arts is
Parla
Colour in the visual arts usually has a point of reference in reality. Whereas sound as music is more often than not abstract. It matters less in abstract painting which colour we use but colours do have natural partners and opposites, look at an artists colour wheel. Colour is a naturally occuring phenominom whereas tonal music in a key system is totally man made, regardless of how 'natural' it might sound. But again, if some paintings had originally been painted in a different colour you would be asking would they ever have worked as we know them now. Our minds get used to things and as c hris' s jesus rock proves, the brain is very powerful even when it is wrong.
Tue, Jan 22 2013, 7:06PM
#8
RE: Key and Character
OK S-K, all music is the same, it's just that some of it sounds different to some of us: yes? There are one or two things around that we cannot see or hear but which do actually exist. And it's your jesus rock, not mine, remember! Anyway, enough nonsense. Try actually listening to the Mozart.
Tue, Jan 22 2013, 7:10PM
#9
RE: Key and Character
I don't want your smelly damp jesus rock. Palm it off onto someone else, try ebay, you can sell anything there.
Tue, Jan 22 2013, 7:50PM
#10
RE: Key and Character
A question that does occur to me is why I do not have this association when it comes to tones, but I do have it when it comes to colours?
Because you neither have perfect pitch or are a synaesthete. If you had or were, a well known piece played in the wrong key would sound just as odd.
This ^
And loudly from the rooftops hear us shout it --- "Down with the New Age and the proliferation of pet ideologies that only divide hearts on Sacred Observance, and play directly into the hands of globalist hegemonic powers. Up with the simple inextinguishable Light of Truth".