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It is interesting that the author here has to describe what emotional effect Schubert might have intended with his use of keys; when writers today do this, to m

It is interesting that the author here has to describe what emotional effect Schubert might have intended with his use of keys; when writers today do this, to me it suggests that contemporary readers might not hear this angst themselves. Not only did later Romanticism and Debussy stretch tonality to a point where listeners became more comfortable with hitherto dissonant keys, and so they do not hear things the way Schubert’s listeners would have, but modern pop music is very constrained in its use of modulation so society has lost much of the grammar of Baroque, Classical and Romantic music.

akdor1154 6y ago
I don't even understand the article's claim to dissonance - is it the dissonance you'd hear from e.g playing on B on a just intonation C piano? Or is it a 'dissonance' in the sense of a modulation to a non-diatonic key? Or is it just some expectation that the audience associates moods with different keys? (So assuming the audience can be expected to have at least subconscious absolute pitch, seems unlikely)
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  None of the above. It's dissonance as a language - traditional expectations of how the harmony develops being stretched, subverted, warped, and so on. For emotional effect. There isn't really a modern equivalent, which is more or less the point. Not even jazz, which is distantly related. But you can get a remote sense from something like Damien Hirst's Verity Statue, which starts from some familiar expectations of public sculpture and subverts and undermines them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jrvX2ZrDvk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jrvX2ZrDvk The difference is Hirst evokes horror and a Capitalist Gothic aesthetic. Schubert is superficially more reassuring now. But at the time he was influenced by what used to be called the Sublime - which doesn't just mean excellent as it does today, but used to mean a complex state of emotion and experience that was so intense and rich it was overwhelming. That's what's buried in Schubert's use of harmony and dissonance.
telesilla 6y ago
Pianos actually sounded differently back then, different keys were genuinely distinct. https://wmich.edu/mus-theo/courses/keys.html https://wmich.edu/mus-theo/courses/keys.html "When equal temperament became the dominant tuning after 1917, the aural quality of every key became the same, and therefore these affective characteristics are mostly lost to us"
- wirrbel 6y ago
  Some of the stuff that is nowadays attributed to temperament is actually related to certain instrumentation being preferably set in specific keys that were easy to play with the available instruments. Also competing tunings on various instruments mean that the situation was never a "fix" target. I am not saying tunings don't play a role, in fact you can hear that John Frusciante sometimes has played with slightly detuned guitar strings for effect. But it its also not so simple as such compilations of key - and - purpose might make you want to believe.
jancsika 6y ago
> but modern pop music is very constrained in its use of modulation so society has lost much of the grammar of Baroque, Classical and Romantic music. Just to give a sense of context, try this exercise: 1. Pick any modern pop song. 2. Write down every seemingly superficial aspect of the song you hear: vocoder overuse, why an cheesy electric guitar sound accompanies a certain lyric, whether a given sound is employed for irony's sake, which sounds or lyrics are allusions to other songs, etc. 3. Continue until you literally cannot think of anything else significant in the music. If you're exhaustive you should come up with dozens of bullet points for even a short song. Now realize that wrt Schubert, you've mentioned a single such bullet. That is to say-- we're all missing most of the grammar of those bygone eras.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  I read this a few times and can't parse out what you're saying. Pop music has a lot of gimmicks? ok sure, but what is the bullet for schubert? What is the grammar?
  - simondw 6y ago
    I think the idea is that the effect on the listener is not purely a function of the objective characteristics of the music, but also depends on historical context and conventions that may change -- or be forgotten -- over time.
    - klmadfejno 6y ago
      That sounds right, but I'm not sure I would say that's any less apparent in modern pop, or any art for that matter.

akdor1154 6y ago

I don't even understand the article's claim to dissonance - is it the dissonance you'd hear from e.g playing on B on a just intonation C piano? Or is it a 'dissonance' in the sense of a modulation to a non-diatonic key? Or is it just some expectation that the audience associates moods with different keys? (So assuming the audience can be expected to have at least subconscious absolute pitch, seems unlikely)

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
None of the above. It's dissonance as a language - traditional expectations of how the harmony develops being stretched, subverted, warped, and so on. For emotional effect. There isn't really a modern equivalent, which is more or less the point. Not even jazz, which is distantly related. But you can get a remote sense from something like Damien Hirst's Verity Statue, which starts from some familiar expectations of public sculpture and subverts and undermines them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jrvX2ZrDvk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jrvX2ZrDvk The difference is Hirst evokes horror and a Capitalist Gothic aesthetic. Schubert is superficially more reassuring now. But at the time he was influenced by what used to be called the Sublime - which doesn't just mean excellent as it does today, but used to mean a complex state of emotion and experience that was so intense and rich it was overwhelming. That's what's buried in Schubert's use of harmony and dissonance.

telesilla 6y ago

Pianos actually sounded differently back then, different keys were genuinely distinct. https://wmich.edu/mus-theo/courses/keys.html https://wmich.edu/mus-theo/courses/keys.html "When equal temperament became the dominant tuning after 1917, the aural quality of every key became the same, and therefore these affective characteristics are mostly lost to us"

wirrbel 6y ago
Some of the stuff that is nowadays attributed to temperament is actually related to certain instrumentation being preferably set in specific keys that were easy to play with the available instruments. Also competing tunings on various instruments mean that the situation was never a "fix" target. I am not saying tunings don't play a role, in fact you can hear that John Frusciante sometimes has played with slightly detuned guitar strings for effect. But it its also not so simple as such compilations of key - and - purpose might make you want to believe.

jancsika 6y ago

> but modern pop music is very constrained in its use of modulation so society has lost much of the grammar of Baroque, Classical and Romantic music. Just to give a sense of context, try this exercise: 1. Pick any modern pop song. 2. Write down every seemingly superficial aspect of the song you hear: vocoder overuse, why an cheesy electric guitar sound accompanies a certain lyric, whether a given sound is employed for irony's sake, which sounds or lyrics are allusions to other songs, etc. 3. Continue until you literally cannot think of anything else significant in the music. If you're exhaustive you should come up with dozens of bullet points for even a short song. Now realize that wrt Schubert, you've mentioned a single such bullet. That is to say-- we're all missing most of the grammar of those bygone eras.

klmadfejno 6y ago
I read this a few times and can't parse out what you're saying. Pop music has a lot of gimmicks? ok sure, but what is the bullet for schubert? What is the grammar?
- simondw 6y ago
  I think the idea is that the effect on the listener is not purely a function of the objective characteristics of the music, but also depends on historical context and conventions that may change -- or be forgotten -- over time.
  - klmadfejno 6y ago
    That sounds right, but I'm not sure I would say that's any less apparent in modern pop, or any art for that matter.