Listening to a classical music radio station, you will generally hear music by a few dead white men. And not even the entire oeuvre of any of them, nor even their best compositions, but whatever happens to be the most popular and most easily available on CD.
Decades ago, tired of hearing the same selections come up over and over again on the WQRS schedule, I started trying to find other music. My searches focused on names. Just a few years ago I thought about searching by instrumentation.
And only very recently I thought about organizing my searches around the circle of fifths. It’s already yielded results: I discovered Alexis de Castillon’s Piano Concerto in D major, but that was because I found that she wrote something in A-flat minor in her Piano Quartet in E-flat major.
I still haven’t decided if I’m going to go through the whole circle of fifths here, but I definitely intend to cover the less used keys. I started last month with A-flat minor (seven flats). I do intend to go through the whole circle of fifths on the Strike the Right Note blog (there I also started with A-flat minor).
I know that some of you already know and understand the circle of fifths quite well. And some of you can read music notation but don’t know about the circle of fifths, which is likely the case if you haven’t formally studied music.
I posted a lengthy explanation about the circle of fifths in the open thread about C-flat major, though I think it left some people confused. I’m going to try a different tack.
Let’s say you’re at the piano, just noodling around, and just by luck you come up with a nice melody. You want to write it down before you forget it, so you write it down sloppily, you can clean it up later.
Let’s say your melody uses a lot of black keys on the piano. You know the note names of the white keys on the piano: C, D, E, F, G, A, B. The black key between C and D can be referred to as either C-sharp or D-flat. Likewise, the black key between D and E can be referred to as either D-sharp or E-flat. Likewise for the black keys between F and G, G and A, and A and B.
In your hurry to jot down your melody, you used both flats and sharps without caring which is technically correct. When you review your quick sketch, you realize that, except for one or two notes, your melody is clearly in C-sharp major (seven sharps) or D-flat major (five flats).
How do you choose? If it’s going to be a piano piece, you should probably choose D-flat major. The five notes with flats (D-flat, E-flat, G-flat, A-flat and B-flat) neatly correspond to the black keys of the piano, whereas in C-sharp major, the notes that are C-natural and F-natural in D-flat major are instead B-sharp and E-sharp.
But even if it’s going to be a short piece, you probably still want it to pass through a couple other keys. Like maybe it’s going to have a lyrical counter-theme in the dominant, and pass briefly through the mediant minor before going back to the tonic, for example.
In D-flat major that would mean subtract one flat (with accidentals as needed) to get to A-flat major, then you may or may not need any other accidentals to suggest F minor before going back to D-flat major.
In C-sharp major, this scheme would need adding one sharp (instead of subtracting one flat) to get to G-sharp major and its relative, E-sharp minor. In the ascending melodic minor scale, that would be E-sharp, F-double sharp, G-sharp, … you get the idea.
But now let’s say instead your inspiration is, instead of C-sharp major or D-flat major, is more like D-sharp minor or E-flat minor. Which do you choose?
The key of A-sharp minor (seven sharps) is relative to C-sharp major. Subtracting one sharp gives D-sharp minor (six sharps). The key of B-flat minor (five flats) is relative to D-flat major. Adding one flat gives E-flat minor (six flats).
So your main melody alone is not enough information to choose a key for your composition. Johann Sebastian Bach found himself in a similar dilemma, though reportedly he had a low opinion of composers who come up with their ideas by noodling around on a keyboard.
Bach’s solution, in the case of his Prelude and Fugue in E-flat minor from Book I of his Well-Tempered Clavier, was to actually write the prelude in E-flat minor but the ensuing fugue in D-sharp minor.
The preludes and fugues of the Well-Tempered Clavier demonstrate that with the then-newfangled tuning, a keyboard instrument can play in any key without any major compromises to the tuning of perfect intervals. Without getting overly technical, I can say that instead minor compromises are spread out through the whole range of the instrument.
In the case of the Prelude and Fugue in E-flat minor, you can tell where the prelude ends and the fugue begins. But would you know of the switch from E-flat minor to D-sharp minor, even if you are blessed (or cursed) with perfect pitch?
Actually, I’m puzzled by why Bach chose to write it this way. In D-sharp minor, the fugue requires several B-sharps and C-double sharps. which in E-flat minor would just be C-natural and D-natural. And I seriously doubt the ornament in measure 74 was the reason.
I don’t think Bach meant a mordent here, but that’s the symbol I’m using for now in Finale as I try to untangle the lines in E-flat minor:
Either way, there is some ambiguity here, as the ornament involves either B-sharp and C-sharp or C-natural and D-flat, right?
The most plausible explanation for Bach’s choice of D-sharp minor is that the music has religious significance. In Vivaldi’s day, sharps were written as X’s that look like our modern double sharp symbol. Despite the orientation, they were thought of bearing a similarity to crosses, which as religious symbols are shown upright rather than slanted.
There’s a lot more music in E-flat minor to choose from than there is music in A-flat minor. Though most of it seems to be piano music.
Like, for example, Ante el Escorial, by Ernesto Lecuona (el Escorial is a palace in Spain). Since it was first published in 1943, it’s not public domain in either Europe or the United States, so I take the good folks at IMSLP at their word that the piece is in E-flat minor. But if you watch a performance on YouTube, like Anat Navarro’s, you’ll probably see her hands on the black keys more often than the white keys.
I’ve listened to music by Lecuona before, but I don’t recall having heard this particular piece before.
Maybe you’ve heard of Cécile Chaminade. During her lifetime, she made a conscious decision to focus on solo piano music, short little pieces amateurs could play with ease. She wrote no string quartets, no symphonies, knowing full well she wouldn’t be taken seriously in those genres, as Emilie Mayer could attest to.
Chaminade’s Flute Concertino, Opus 107, was written only in her connection to her duties as a professor at the Conservatoire de Paris. I don’t know what the history is for her Duo Symphonique in E-flat minor, Opus 117, but it’s definitely a piece I would like to see orchestrated.
The only reason I don’t promise an orchestration of this piece is because I have other orchestration projects on my backburner, including music by Clara Schumann.
By the way, Clara Schumann wrote a song, “Am Strande,” in E-flat minor. I find the manuscript (available on IMSLP) much easier to read than the Bach manuscript (the 6-flat key signature is written in the more familiar pattern) but I just can’t make out the lyrics (and I generally can’t understand sung German if I can’t also see the words in print).
I believe the performers in this next video had a nicely typeset modern edition of the song, but I also believe they didn’t get it from IMSLP.
It seems only Russian symphonists used E-flat minor for orchestral music. The names Prokofiev and Mysaskovsky come to mind. But maybe also Havergal Brian, I’ll have to check...
The open thread question: what are some of your favorite compositions in E-flat minor? (Composers, please feel free to post regardless of key).