A couple of weeks ago, I posted an open thread about music in A-flat minor. This led me to discover music by three obscure women composers: Julie Baroni-Cavalcabó, Patricia Long and Sophie Auguste de Weyrauch.
Alexis de Castillon is actually a man, but he’s also rather obscure. His Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Opus 1, has an Adagio in A-flat minor. His Piano Concerto, in the conventional key of D major (which, however, going by Beethoven, is a bit unusual for a piano concerto) was recorded by the great pianist Aldo Ciccolini on the EMI label.
And yet I had never heard of him or of his music (I hope to write more about his music in the near future). Maybe I would have eventually discovered these composers if I hadn’t inquired about music in A-flat minor. Or maybe I wouldn’t have, I don’t know.
I also discovered very obscure music by otherwise famous dead white men, like the Fugue in A-flat minor, WoO 8, by Johannes Brahms.
The simple act of looking for music in unusual keys can help us discover the music of composers unjustly neglected because of their race or gender, or because of a bit of bad luck at a premiere, or even for no historically discernible reason.
The process of repertoire formation does not magically bring the best music to the forefront of the public consciousness. And even some brilliant white composers can be relegated to obscurity just because of circumstances they could not control or even foresee.
I still haven’t decided if I’m going to go through the whole circle of fifths for these open threads on Daily Kos (I do intend to go through the whole circle of fifths on the Strike the Right Note blog). At least I’m going to go ahead with C-flat major here on Daily Kos. But I should explain what the circle of fifths is before going much further.
The fifteen major keys can be neatly organized into a circle. Same goes for the fifteen minor keys, since each of them is relative to a major key with the same key signature. The key of A minor is relative to C major: no flats or sharps in the key signature. For A minor, F and G are given sharps or naturals as necessary for the melodic or harmonic flavor of the minor scale.
To illustrate the circle of fifths, here’s a boring little musical composition with a small semblance of melody:
It starts out in C-flat major (seven flats). Then one flat (for F) is subtracted to get to G-flat major, and another one (for C) is subtracted to get to D-flat major. Skipping ahead a little bit,
we’re down to one flat (for B in F major) and that’s subtracted to get to C major. Now we start adding sharps. One sharp (for F) gets us to G major, another one (for C) gets us to D major. Skip ahead again to
It doesn’t actually have to end here. I’ve left out the measure for B major (five sharps in measure 13), but, with just a little knowledge of music notation, you can reconstruct it with 99% if not 100% certainty, by rewriting the first measure with sharps (and naturals) instead of flats.
That’s because C-flat major (seven flats) is enharmonic to B major (five sharps). Likewise G-flat major (six flats) is enharmonic to F-sharp major (six sharps). And D-flat major (five flats) is enharmonic to C-sharp major (seven sharps). So the whole thing wraps around in a circle.
Subtracting flats is equivalent to adding sharps, and subtracting sharps is equivalent to adding flats. So this particular composition could wrap around and repeat endlessly.
Or it could be extended backwards to double flats or forward to double sharps. F-flat major (with one double flat for B and six single flats for the rest) and G-sharp major (with one double sharp for F and six single sharps for the rest) are extremely awkward ways to write E major (four sharps) and A-flat major (four flats).
Even seven flats or seven sharps might seem needlessly awkward. Why not just use the enharmonic key signature with five sharps or five flats? In the absence of more information about the purpose of the music (liturgical, educational, theatrical, etc.) or the intended performers, it would seem to make sense to choose fewer flats or sharps.
To a computer, all major scales are alike, differing only in frequencies, and all minor scales are alike, also differing only in frequencies. But to human musicians playing mechanical or even electro-mechanical instruments, the major scales are very different from each other, as are the minor scales.
I know firsthand that more than four flats or sharps in the written key signature give musicians trouble (I’m careful to specify “written key signature” because of transposing instruments).
The common wisdom holds that wind instruments play better in flat keys, and string instrument play better in sharp keys. It’s a lot more nuanced than that. It’s still an oversimplification to say that wind instruments play better within two sharps or flats of B-flat major, and string instruments within two sharps or flats of D major.
A woodwind instrument, at its most basic, is a pipe with six holes. By covering and uncovering holes in a specific sequence, you obtain the notes of the instrument’s basic major scale. You cover three of the holes with your left hand, and three with your right hand, presumably leaving out the pinky and thumb of each hand. Blow through the mouthpiece or on the reed and that should give you the instrument’s lowest note.
On the right there’s a fingering chart for a basic woodwind instrument with B-flat major as its basic major scale. I don’t remember the fingering for A, but I’m sure it’s not difficult at all once I refresh my memory with the fingering chart. As for the B-flat an octave higher, cover the six holes and overblow (assuming this instrument overblows at the octave). Or maybe the instrument has a seventh hole that you can cover or uncover with the thumb of your upper hand.
With this example instrument, notes outside the B-flat major scale are possible, but they require half-covering one of the holes. From my own experience, that’s easier said than done. For example, to play the same scale shown above but with D-flat instead of D-natural, you’d have to half-cover the middle hole for the lower hand.
So, for this particular instrument, music in B-flat major is very easy. Music in a key like E major (four sharps), in which almost every note would involve half-covering a hole, not so much.
I think it was sometime in the Baroque that someone came up with the idea of buttons for woodwind instruments, which you press to open or half-open holes. Some Baroque oboes, for example, still exist today, and you can see that they have keys only for some of the holes. I’m guessing those were to make it easier to half-cover some of the holes.
But even with all the keys of a modern woodwind instrument, you can still discern from a fingering chart the basic scale of the instrument that would be easy to play without having to half-cover any holes. That’s because the buttons for the basic scale are almost always arrayed in direct correspondence to the six holes.
Notes outside the basic scale of an instrument then require either half-covering holes or potentially awkward fingerings. And even if an individual fingering does not seem too bad, in the context of other fingerings that might be necessary for a particular melody, it could be quite problematic.
So our hypothetical B-flat wind instrument would be quite at home in music in B-flat major and perhaps also music in F major (one flat fewer than B-flat major) and E-flat major (one flat more than B-flat major).
But music in C major might be awkward. So why not just make the same instrument, but slightly smaller, so that it has C major as its basic scale? And then let’s also make a slightly smaller instrument that the C instrument, one that has D major as its basic scale.
Then, between those three instruments, we might have the circle of fifths covered from E-flat major to A major. And that might just be good enough for the music that we want to play.
But this causes another problem: musicians who play this hypothetical instrument that’s available in B-flat, C and D would have to learn three different fingering charts.
That’s how the idea of transposing instruments came about. It was decided that the C instrument would be considered the default.
Music in B-flat major for the B-flat instrument would be written in C major, and music in D major for the D instrument would be written in D major.
It might not be necessary to make instruments in E-flat, E, F, F-sharp, etc. Music in E-flat major, for example, might be quite manageable on the B-flat instrument. Likewise music in A major might be reasonably easy on the D instrument.
With these three hypothetical instruments, the musician would only have to learn the fingering chart for the C instrument, and then be able to play any of the instruments in B-flat, C or D. As long as the composer or arranger took care to specify the correct instrument and transpose accordingly, it would be enough for the musician to select the correct instrument and use the C instrument fingering.
That’s kind of the situation with clarinets, though the C clarinet seems to have never taken off, and it’s mostly instruments in B-flat and A that are in common use today (I might get a comment reminding me that the clarinet overblows at the twelfth, not the octave). Music in keys with up to four sharps or flats can be managed by at least one of the clarinets.
None of this seems to matter to highly original atonal music. One of the performers might pick up the wrong instrument and no one might care or even notice, because all highly original atonal music tends to sound the same: like highly unoriginal noise (if you like atonal music, it’s probably less original atonal music).
String instruments are generally thought to play better in sharp keys, but I can tell you from personal experience that too many sharps lead to intonation problems. I wrote a String Quartet in A major that at one point passes through C-sharp major.
But that wasn’t as bad as the unison minuet in D minor that I wrote which passes through C-sharp minor. That turned out to be a cruel test of intonation, is what I think every time I listen to my recording of the only live performance so far.
One time back in college, I was playing my ukulele, practicing just the I and V7 chords in F major. A classmate who heard me was impressed, even though I tried to explain the fingerings are quite easy.
And then there’s the harp. With one or two exceptions, each string on a harp can play one of three notes: flat, natural or sharp, depending on the setting of one of the seven pedals. For example, if the C pedal is in the sharp position, each C-string will sound C-sharp in the appropriate octave.
Thoughtful composers will include at least some indication of pedal settings (D C B | E F G A, if I recall correctly), since they’re not necessarily derived from the key signature, even for major keys.
For A-flat major, the obvious pedal settings would be ♭ ♮ ♭ | ♭ ♮ ♮ ♭. But ♭ ♮ ♯ | ♭ ♮ ♮ ♭ may occasionally be useful. The B-sharps can reinforce the C-naturals, and you can still include a V7 chord if you don’t mind omitting the fifth (B-flat).
Theoretically any pedal change is possible. But, as a general rule, the affected strings should not be sounding when the change is made. Also, more than two pedal changes per foot are inadvisable. A harpist might swing a quick ♭ ♮ ♭ | ♭ ♮ ♮ ♭ to ♭ ♭ ♭ | ♭ ♮ ♭ ♭. But ♭ ♮ ♭ | ♭ ♮ ♮ ♭ to ♭ ♭ ♭ | ♭ ♭ ♭ ♭ would require time the composer might fail to give.
As you might have surmised, music using lots of borrowed chords can be quite difficult for the harp. Take for example the short piece I put at the very top. It’s theoretically playable on the harp.
Oops, I forgot to move that low C-flat in the last bar one octave up. Oh well. Far more serious are the awkward pedal changes for sounding strings. To give you an idea of how little time is given to make the pedal changes, here’s a screenshot from the Finale music notation software:
Even without these problems, I would make no promises whatsoever as to how playable this is on the harp. Still, C-flat major is the most resonant key for the harp.
It’s no surprise then that the most famous composition in C-flat major is for harp, the harp interlude from Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols.
Except for one carol, the rest of the piece uses keys with at most three flats or sharps.
The open thread question: What other music in C-flat major do you know and like?
Composers, please feel free to post your music regardless of key. Even if I do go through the whole circle of fifths here on Daily Kos, it might be a while before I get to the pertinent key.