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Composition

University of Massachusetts Amherst

History of key characteristics

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The Affective Properties Of Keys In Instrumental Music From The Late Nineteenth And Early Twentieth Centuries, Maho A. Ishiguro Jan 2010

The Affective Properties Of Keys In Instrumental Music From The Late Nineteenth And Early Twentieth Centuries, Maho A. Ishiguro

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The concept of key characteristics deals with the particular moods which different tonalities are believed to provide to music. Discussions regarding their existence and the validity of the phenomena have always been controversial because of a lack of fundamental reasons and explanations for them. Nevertheless, references to key characteristics have appeared in various fields of study and over many centuries: the Greek doctrine of ethos, writings of Guido d’Arezzo, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Traité de l’harmonie, scribbles in Beethoven’s sketches, and several passages in Hermann von Helmholtz’s On the Sensations of Tones.

The attitudes and opinions towards key characteristics have varied in …