Why is it that music in minor keys is perceived by many people (myself included) to be sad or somber, and music in major keys is perceived to be happy or joyous? Is this some sort of conditioning within Western European civilization? In civilizations with other tonalities, does the major/minor interval hold true to mood? Has anyone ever heard of research being done on this question?
Pretty complex, I guess. I have been wondering about this lately. Any input is appreciated. Thanks.
Forgot to clear the cookies. This is my question.
I can’t believe nobody has replied to this, there are a lot of musicologist members! Every once in awhile I look this matter of major and minor up in music encyclopedias and other books and they just give you the runaround. It is almost as bad as when you look up why we have a 7 note scale that operates with in a 12 note range (intonation). That question is never answered because music people can’t understand why anybody would even ask it. I have tried to find out whether countries that have the more common pentatonic scale still somehow have the interval of the so-called fifth, which is supposedly important mathematically and in terms of the way our ears are made. No results. I have tried to find out whether in pentatonic countries, which are presumably native America, China, and Africa, they have a sense of finality, like we do. (I understand that in Western music if you play a piece composed in the seven note scale that we are used to and leave out the last note of this new piece nobody has heard before, everybody in the room, if asked, will hum the same note, which is called the tonic, and which is the first note of the key in which that piece was played. This I understand. What about in pentatonic countries? Any sense of finality there? When I look up Indian music of India they don’t mention scales until about the 36th page. But they do have scales, only one can’t find out how many notes are in these scales. I do know that in experimental music such as atonal and whole tone music there is deliberately no feeling for the tonic. Now as to major and minor, you may as well also ask whether composing in any certain key means anything. B flat minor? F sharp (they never say why there is no G flat)–I did read that marches were usually composed in C or D or G. I read that there isn’t anything about the minor that makes it “minor,” ie., off, sad, Other, but I don’t really believe it. I think it sounds the way it does because we hear notes we expect to be natural as unexpectedly flatted.
Spiderwoman, look here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=40789.
HUGS!
Sqrl
Thanks for your replies. I wasn’t able to find the link earlier, but was apparently using the right words with which to search. I’m surprised that someone asked such a similar question so recently.
I like atonal music, and I know it affects my mood. I think it is different each time, though.
I wondered about the learned response explanation. I, too, believe music is its own language, and I remember crying over Ase’s Death (sp?) from Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 almost before I could talk.
Don, I believe that sense of finality (gravity towards the tonic) that you talk about is a physical phenomenon, not a cultural one.
Yes, the perfect fifth and forth are common to an overwhelming majority of different culture’s music around the world. The rest of the scale varies greatly though.
Damn! I have so much info on this, it’s frustrating that I don’t have it in front of me, nor can I remember specific examples. Try reading Reck “Music of the whole earth” (IIRC), great book!
If I get a chance I’ll update this thread with some specifics.
And Spider Woman, as has been said in the other thread, I think the major/minor mood question is a combination of physics and socialization. The major chord consists of notes very present in the overtone series (I.E. there is energy present at each note in the triad when the root is played on most instruments). Why should this sound be happy? Well, we are content in hearing it. There is no dissonance, no controversy, it makes perfect sense to our ear. Our little sound recepter hairs in our ear vibrate in pleasant ratios. I think there is an environmental component to this in that we learn how to interpret that particular neural code as happy, but I really don’t know.
The minor chord has a bit of controversy though, a little bit of dissonance.
Thank you so much! I’ll look for that book also.
-----
—////\\
The ancient Greeks had metaphysical theories about the modes, as well. It is unfortunate that I don’t remember what the theories were. I think that one of my professors told me that one philosopher called the Lydian mode the most disturbing (?).
I think I learned in music theory class many years ago that the Beatles’ song Elanor Rigby was written in Dorian mode. I found that song to be hauntingly disturbing also, and only in part because of the words.
It’s funny, I’ve been playing guitar for about 10 years, but I have no theory training, so when I’m reading how to play songs in music magazines I’m always facinated that they talk about modes and triads, etc, and I wonder do people (mostly rock stars) think about this sort of thing when they’re writing songs. I’m sure they have rudementary skills like knowing what key they are in, but do most know they are in dorian mode or whatever?
Got to love them Em chords. Could Eleanor Rigby be the name of his beloved guitar? :mad:
Eleanor Rigby really isn’t in Dorian. It is sort of in Dorian for a measure (for those who understand theory, the progression goes Em7 - Em6 - Emb6. The Em6, an Em chord with a M6 (C#) is dorian, but the following chord is back to aolian (natural minor)), though if I were soloing over it I would probably think Dorian.
Dorian really is not a very disturbing mode, and it’s actually much more common in many genres than natural minor. Now Locrian was actually outlawed by Plato in his time, because there is virtually no sense of gravity towards the final (tonic of a mode). It leaves you with a very uneasy, unresolved feeling which was believed to be evil. Imagine Plato hearing some of the hip hop or metal or John Cage of our time.
A while ago I saw the tape of the episode of the “Young People’s Concert” with Leonard Bernstein that had modes as the subject.
He illustrated the Dorian mode (white keys only, starting on D) with “Along Comes Mary” and “Secret Agent Man.”
He illustrated the Mixolydian mode (white keys starting on G) with “My Baby Does the Hanky Panky”, “Norwegian Wood”, and the Kinks’ “Girl, You Really Got Me Goin’”.
aha. that is what i was thinking of.
Thanks for all of your interesting and informative posts!
-----
—////\\
Plato also outlawed polyrhythmic music, or so it says in my translation.
I throw this into the discussion: “Music and the Power of Sound: the Influence of Interval and Tuning on Consciousness” by Alain Danielou.
If I understand this book correctly, Danielou states that the non-equal-tempered scales of India and China can have greater influence on consciousness than the Western equal-tempered tuning.
The first chapter of the book is very “new-agey” but then he gets down to the history of musical tunings in Europe, India and China.
He also says that part of the reason for our Western tuning was inaccurate transmission of musical knowledge from India to Greece several thousand years ago, resulting in the loss of critical pieces of information. The modes, for instance, are garbled remembrances of Indian tonal modes, with the knowkedge of the sustaining tone forgotten. At one point he mentions that our equal-tempered tuning had been independently discovered several timnes in China, but merely recorded and not used because it was too inaccurate in its emotional effect.
Arrgh. I don’t quite have the musical terminology for this…
Danielou also seems to imply that it may be possible to have a predictive science of the effects of music: in other words one could design a piece of music to have a very specific emotional effect on the listener.
It’s been a while since I read this book, and it was a bit beyond my simple knowledge of music. I think that my music teacher understood it, but I didn’t know enough to understand his version of it. So it remains in the “intriguing puzzle I will get back to” section.
But I highly recommend it to any musicologists out there. Maybe they can explain it to me…
Afterthought: it seems to me that the greatest influence of Western popular music these days is through rhythm, not pitch or interval.
I gather from my drumming friends that the drumming in Western popular music is far simplified from its roots in Africa… I take this from an excellent essay by Michael Ventura, “Hear That Long Snake Moan”, about the African roots of American music. It was in the Whole Earth Review a while back, and also in one of his collections.
Arrgghh… that last link doesn’t work. $%%#Amazon.com *&&^%# cookies… Anyway, go to Amazon.com and do a search on “Michael Ventura”. The essay “Hear That Long Snake Moan” is in “Shadow Dancing in the USA”, I think.
Well, I’ve been playing for 35 years and I don’t know modes, either. (Of course, my lead playing is very rudimentary, too, limited to Chuck Berry type stuff for the most part.) I know just enough music theory to understand how chords are put together (though I start getting shaky by the time you get to diminished and augmenteds).
I have nothing to support this other than my own guess, but I’ll bet the most interesting and effective rock ‘n’ roll songs and guitar solos have been created by those with little or no formal musical training. (Well, interesting to me, anyway.)
I read a quote recently from George Martin in which he said it was a plus that Lennon and McCartney had no formal musical training. He felt in might have inhibited their creative process, or stopped them from doing something that was innovative simply because they didn’t know any better that it couldn’t be done.