Key-Character

Author(s): Ll. S. Lloyd, H. V. Spanner and W. S. Russell

Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 81, No. 1173 (Nov., 1940), pp. 456-457
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/923868
Accessed: 04-06-2018 07:55 UTC

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456 THE MUSICAL TIMES November 1940

RECITALS
Dr. W. Greenhouse Allt, St. Giles's Cathedral, Mr.
Mr. Blyton
BlytonDobson,
Dobson,High
High
Pavement
Pavement Chapel,
Chapel,
Notting-
Notting-
Edinburgh-' Jesu, Joy of man's desiring,' Bach ham-Andante (Violin Concerto), Mendelssohn,
Sonata in the style of Handel, Wolstenholme; Allegro Pomposo, Vincent ; March in D, Elgar;
Prelude on 'St. Oswald,' Alan Gray; Fanfare- Introduction and Maestoso (Sonata in C sharp
Toccata for the trumpets, Lemmens; Concerto minor), Harwood, 'Chanson de Nuit,' Elgar;
No. 5, Handel , Prelude and Fugue in B minor, March on a Theme of Handel, Guilmant; Concert
Bach; Fantasia Sonata, Rheinberger; Folk-Tune Fantasia in D, Stewart; 'The Question' and 'The
and Scherzo, Whitlock ; Triumphal March, Hollins; Answer,' Wolstenholme; Festival March, Lyon.
and a Bach programme.
Dr. Paul Steinitz, Ashford Parish Church-Overture Mr. Charles Collins, St. Stephen's Walbrook-
to the ' Occasional' Oratorio; Largo, Allegro, Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, Bach,; Two
Aria, and two Variations, Festing; Fugue in C, Preludes, Stanford ; Sarabanda and Giga, Zipoli-
Bach; Legend, Karg-Elert; Sonata No. 7 (first Wall; Andante (Symphony No. 1), Vierne;
Carillon-Sortie, Mulet.
movement), Rheinberger; Allegretto, Guilmant;
Bridal March, Parry. (Miss Theodora Headley Mr. Herbert F. Ellingford, St. George's Hall, Liver-
played viola solos.) pool-Marche Heroique, Saint-Saens ; Adagio in E,
Dr. C. H. Moody, Ripon Cathedral-Folk-Tune, Merkel; Four Studies for the Organ, Heap;
Whitlock Canon in B minor, Schumann , Lgende, Funeral March and Hymn of Seraphs, Guilmant;
Dvork , Largo (Sonata in A), Beethoven , Postlude Symphony No. 5, Widor; Sinfonia to Part 3,
in D, Smart; ' Jesu, Joy of man's desiring,' Bach. ' Solomon,' Handel; ' St. Francis preaching to the
Mr. C. Daly Atkinson, St. Barnabas's, Derby- Birds,' Liszt, Air and Variations in A, Hesse;
Fanfare, Daly A tkinson ; Elegy, Parry , Prayer andFantasia and Fugue in E minor, Best; Fantasia in
Cradle Song, Guilmant; Marche Triomphale, F minor, Mozart , 'The Hebrides,' Mendelssohn ;
Karg-Elert. (Mrs. Madge played violin solos by Paean, Harwood; Sonata No. 12, Rheinberger,
Eccles and Becker.) Variations in B flat, Thorne.

Letters to the Editor

in their natural surroundings. What we supposed
Key-Character
Key-Character to be optical illusions are really a normal process of
As one who has had the hardihood to write of vision. Colour exists only in our visual perception;
scientific matters in your columns as a musician, it is part of the response of our eyes and brain to
perhaps I may respond to the general invitation light vibrations.
in As an extreme example, there are
Notes and News, p. 380, of your September issue colour-blind people to whom red and green are much
to contribute to views about key-character. the same. It is not to be expected, then, that if
Science can make a contribution, though its nature one of us should try to express his individual aural
may disappoint some. Perhaps I may attempt a perception in terms of the responses of another of his
brief outline as follows. Acoustics only became a senses (touch, taste, or sight), he can make himself
separate branch of physics because the ear was such intelligible to others.
a convenient means of detecting the existence, in I am not quite happy about your suggestion that,
the air, of vibrations which were neither too slow nor because the same key is described as red by some and
too rapid to excite aural sensations. It was natural as green by others, a fallacy is involved. I fancy
for men to assume at first that those sensations the matter is more subtle than that. Such incon-
corresponded exactly to the vibrations in the sistencies
air. of description may indicate that the
Later it was realized that they did not always so attempt to describe an aural perception in terms of
correspond; and, as observations extended, some colour is honest, even if it is unintelligible to us.
began to think of ' aural illusions' comparable with We must always remember that neither the music
the so-called optical illusions, i.e. of errors of judg- we hear, nor the colours we see, exist outside our
ment made by the brain in assessing the sensations heads
of the ear. They continued to draw the natural The story is told that when someone complained
distinction between a sensation (in the ear) and a that he could not see sunsets such as Turner trans-
perception (by the brain). Today all this is becom- ferred to his canvas, the artist replied, 'Don't you wish
ing half a century behind the times. The distinction you could ?' Beethoven's description of his feeling
between a sensation and a perception is beginning to about a particular key may be meaningless to us.
dissolve as knowledge grows. We must recognize But he who asserts, on supposedly scientific grounds,
that the product of aural perception depends on the that it was meaningless to Beethoven is suspect at
co-operation of the brain and the ear. We can no once. He is only asserting, what was probably
longer assume an exact correlation between the obvious to us all the time, that he never possessed
vibrations in the air and the music we hear. The the hearing, aural and mental, which Beethoven had
actual correlation depends on the physio-psychologicalas a young man.
make-up of each one of us. It varies from individual The moral that science draws is that what really
to individual. In other words, we must not suppose matters is to discover what musicians hear in music,
that the same music sounds the same to different and the difference of response in the ears of different
people. We have good scientific grounds for musicians to the same set of vibrations in the air.
thinking
that it does not. To take an obvious example: not These differences are real; and are interesting con-
tributions to evidence about aural perception. How
all of us have the ' good ear ' of the string player who
is a really skilled artist. they shall be described is a further problem. To me
Similar discrepancies exist with other senses. Thecolour is a bad analogy. I am conscious on the
piano of a difference, other than pitch, between
product of visual perception is not to be identified
with the perceived object. This is particularly true C major and F sharp major. To describe it, the
of the shapes and sizes of objects seen with both eyes best I can do is to say that there is a sort of squareness

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November 1940 THE MUSIC. AL TIMES 457

(a tactile
tactile sensation)
sensation) about
aboutCCmajor,
major,while Imy
whilemy had no idea this 'gift' was uncommon until I
search
search
for
for anan analogue
analogue for for FFsharp
sharpmajormajorgropes
gropes
cameround
round
to a ait to other musicians, who usually
mention
sensation of taste. But I don't expect anyone to thought it incredible; and when they tested me with
understand what I think I mean. music (familiar or new) I could name the key in
I cannot trespass on your space to explain the which they were playing. The pitch does not affect
contribution of physical acoustics; it tells how the the matter at all. Transposition is beside the point.
resonance effects in orchestral instruments change as It is the key played in that one knows.
the note changes, with the result that the overtone I suggest that one factor may be the tuning system
structure varies with the note; something quite of keyboard instruments, as it is less easy to deter-
different from a change of pitch, and quite conceivablymine the key of an unaccompanied vocal item or of
a starting point for different perceptions of key- a string quartet.
character; for the character of the 'tone' we hear W. S. RUSSELL.
depends (1) on the overtone structure of the vibrations
Saltburn-by-the-Sea, Yorks.
we listen to, and (2) on our individual make-up.
(I was on the point of welcoming 'key-character'
because it was a colourless word, which is to begin
going round in a circle again !) Air-Raid
Air-RaidSirens Sirens
A reader who may have remarked what I wrote in
your September issue about 'the thirds we hear' The
The alert
alertsignal
signal
has has
timetimeas well
as well
as pitch.
as pitch.
Most of
Mos
will perhaps appreciate why I fought shy of develop-the
the sirens
sirenstoto
which
whichI have
I have
listened
listened
in myintwo
mydistricts
two dist
ing that theme in a couple of paragraphs. (central
(centralLondon
London and
anda south-west
a south-west suburb)
suburb)
have sung
have sun
their leitmotif more or less as follows (all the move-
LL. S. LLOYD. ment being, of course, portanzento)

Science is having much to say about music just

now. This is a good thing, as it shows that science
has its limitations-a thing that needs a lot of show-
ing. On this subject of key-character, for instance, The first bar may last for five to seven crotchets.
there are many things that science cannot explain, The semibreve in bar 3 is probably too long. The
and I suggest the following matters as being provoca- E sharp and G sharp are set down as a semiquaver
tive of discussion among musicians. because the average siren seems to touch on them for
I think it is Dr. Scholes who puts it on record
only an instant before moving upwards; I have
rarely heard a siren move down to G and E and hold
somewhere that Beethoven's C minor was really
them. The ascent is noted in quavers because it is
C sharp minor (I have not his books here for reference, decidedly quicker than the descent.
but I feel sure that some difference of the kind is
believed to have existed at that time). During the pause on D and B there is usually a
good deal of G in the air.
The deplorable necessity for the transposition of
classical songs makes it very difficult for the ordinary When a number of alerts are audible at the same
man to know just what the composer really meant. time the long-held D and B tend to dominate the
If the 'Minnelied' of Brahms, for instance, was chorus, and may have suggested to some people that
an all-clear was being sounded. Perhaps it is for this
written in C, it has just that 'natural' and unexag-
reason
gerated feeling which is one of its chief charms for that some sirenists have lately taken to cutting
me and I want to know whether ' Feldeinsamkeit'out the pause on the top notes.
belongs to A flat or F, for this makes a great deal of W. MCNAUGHT.
difference to the song.
It is very interesting to compare the A flat of
Beethoven's Op. 110 and the Prelude to 'Parsifal' ' Feste' invites observations on the musical notes
with the A flat of Chopin and many of his would-be of air-raid sirens.
imitators.
In the course of my duties I listen daily to a siren
For me, Debussy's ' Clair de Lune' is all wrong notin 100 yards distant, and experimentation with a
D flat, if anything like moonlight is suggested; high-pitched harmonium and a normal piano has led
sunset, if you will, but not moonlight. And it is to the following findings:
very interesting to note that his later 'Et la Lune The loudest and most predominant note is D on
descend sur le Temple qui fut' is in E minor, with the treble stave. The B immediately below sounds
the ' moonlight' motif in the major. almost as loud. Much softer, but obviously in
I am sure that the 'colours' of keys are a real evidence is the G on the second line of the treble
experience, even though different people get differentstave. This G, in favourable circumstances seems
results in tabulating them; I myself have a quite to give rise to numerous resultant G's, in some cases
definite scheme. I feel, however, that the colour of as low as the bottom G of the bass clef. If ' Feste '
the key has little meaning with composers before the will play D and B, treble stave, on a very large open
time of Beethoven; and much of Bach and Handel diapason, and then add a soft G, also treble stave,
can be transposed for me without making any on, say, a geigon or bourdon, he will get a not inaccu-
difference to the effect-in their instrumental music, rate representation of the ' all-clear' note.
at least. I think, however, that G meant something The relative pitches of these notes does not vary
special to Bach and D to Handel. with the rising and falling of the whole sound.
H. V. SPANNER. Before becom;ng completely inaudible, it mutters
Oxford. gloriously with a genuine 32-ft. roll !
To listen from a distance to a whole chorus of
sirens, some on the rising note while others are
I agree with your September 'Notes and News' descending or at their apex, is to experience a thrill
suggestion that the term 'key-colour' ought to be which is far from unmusical. In fact, cacophonous
dropped in favour of 'key-character.' as some may think it, the fact that every siren has the
Like many musicians, I have no difficulty in deter- G major chord as its foundation gives the whole
mining the key of a piece of music, a faculty I have 'banshee' chorus more claim to definite tonality
had since my early teens. than much modern music !

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