The Fredösphere

Alex Ross restarts the key character discussion.  I love this stuff.  As one who has the ear for key personalities, its jarring to discover perfectly good musicians who poo-poo the whole thing, or give inadequate explanations for the phenomenon.  I feel strongly that the various physical designs of instruments do not fully explain key personalities, however important they may be.  It is true I hate F major when a choir is singing that key, yet happily choose it when composing something for brass ensemble.  Nevertheless, F major sung and F major tooted retain a fundamental common ... whatsamathingy we call character or personality or mood.

Alex identified E-flat minor as the key of death, so I rushed to my own key classification table to find out what I think about it.  Some keys I can describe clearly:  I know E minor is the key of loss, remoteness, loneliness, and nobody is ever going to talk me out of that opinion.  Other keys I find harder to express concisely, and E-flat minor is one of them.  Sure enough, on my list I chickened out and made a lame joke instead of describing it (where I referred to it enharmonically as D-sharp minor).  Looking at the related keys, I see I called C-sharp minor is "desperate" and G-sharp minor is "really desperate."  I suppose I could extrapolate from my own list and align my opinion with Alex's at the same time by calling E flat minor "suicidally desperate."

Christian Schubart is the guy who seems to own the franchise on key personalities, so let's see what he has to say about a few keys:

B minor. This is as it were the key of patience, of calm awaiting one's fate and of submission to divine dispensation.

My key table describes B minor as simply "serious."  Okay, I sorta kinda was right.  In fact, I think Schubart is too specific. 

What does the master say about D flat major:

Db Major.  A leering key, degenerating into grief and rapture. It cannot laugh, but it can smile; it cannot howl, but it can at least grimace its crying.--Consequently only unusual characters and feelings can be brought out in this key.

Forgive me, but this is nuts.  My key table says ... what?  I called it "complex?"  I agreed with Schubart?  Sorry, D flat major is too classy, too sumptuous.  It deserves better.

Let's return to E-flat/D-sharp minor:

D# minor. Feelings of anxiety of the soul's deepest distress, of brooding despair, of blackest depression, of the most gloomy condition of the soul. Every fear, every hesitation of the shuddering heart, breathes out of horrible [D#] minor. If ghosts could speak, their speech would approximate this key.

The sound of ghosts speaking?  Bingo, Alex!  You nailed it.

P.S.  Alex, let me publicly thank you for the link a few days back.  You are a one-man Algonquin Round Table of the blogösphere, except that you're not round, you're not a table, and you're (probably) not Algonquin!