Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Do you guys have a favorite key?

For some reason I have always had an affinity for pieces in the key of Cminor. Often I will hear a piece which I love and sure enough it is in that key...maybe that's why I love Beethoven so much.
I was wondering if you all have a favorite key...I know Gould said something to the effect that if he were a certain key signature it would be F minor.
Any opinions?

I like E major and F-sharp major. Not necessarily to play but to listen to.

I think a key is chosen from 2 important factors: first, some technical challenges in music can only be achieved in a certain key. Debussy's Prelude from Pour Le Piano in Am comes to mind. That can't be played correctly in any other key. The second reason is that certain keys have "personalities". CM is very bright and EbM is considered the "happiest" key of all the majors (some philosophists would say it's because every flat represents a member of the Holy Trinity). BbM is the "grandest" of keys in my opinion because most pieces written in it sound very lush and thick. It's no coincidence either that Beethoven wrote in Cm and C#m often. I could go on and on, but to answer your question, DbM is my favorite key technically and Bb is my favorite sounding.

Mike

d minor is my favorite key in every way

I'd rather play in flat keys.

C# major and minor. Both to listen to and to play.
Both scales fit really nicely as well.

Well, its interesting, baroque composers often used "key symbolism". With the increased usage of well-tempered tuning, all the keys were available, and each key had a different "feeling" attatched to it...joy, death, etc. I don't know specific keys, however...does anyone have a list or anything of what keys symbolized what?
Personally I like e minor a whole lot. I never noticed it, but when i looked back on the pieces i have played over this past year, 75 percent of them are in e minor! i didn't conciously do it either, i just must like the sound.

I have not played the Debussy Prelude in 'Pour le Piano', so I'm curious as to why it cannot be played correctly in any other key? -- Because of the glissando's? (BTW, the Sarabande from PLP is excellent! )

As far as key sigs -- I think E Maj & C# Min tend to 'fit' the hand better than most keys. I still have difficulty playing a perfectly even C scale with consistency. E makes those 'cross unders' easier to play smoothly.

As another poster mentioned -- does anyone else have info on key symbolism that was used?

_Brad

Find this book:

"A History of Key Characteristics in the 18th and early 19th Centuries" by Rita Steblin.

This book has it ALL and is an indispensible research tool regarding the doctrine of affections and related aesthetic thought.

Check your local university music library. Or, if you have $95.00, you can get it from the University of Rochester Press.
http://www.urpress.com/

F# major and b minor.

I remember once reading something in a piano tuning and technology course where Rameau was quoted to say that e-flat minor was the most "horrific" key and that if ghosts spoke, it would be in the language of e-flat minor.

Go figure...

A minor, C major.

Brad, not necessarily the glissandos. Actually, I wasn't thinking of that part when I mentioned it, but there are many part in there that require white key to white key "sliding". Oh, and I'm glad you mentioned the Sarabande. I'm performing the whole suite Nov. 22nd and what's funny is that I feel the least confident about that movement. Wish me luck anyway.

Mike

Favorite major key: C major
Favorite minor key: A minor

Doesn't matter much to me; one key's as good as another. Most of my own music doesn't have a "key" as such. As I spend 90% of playing time with my own stuff, I therefore mostly play in no key, or all keys at once, according to your point of view.

heh,heh.. I suspect that's because you really can't hide behind anything with the Sarabande!!

Good Luck!,
Brad

well I love playing AND listening to Db major
(although, i do not recall there being many popular works in Db major, which i listen to regularly?!)

Chopin's prelude, Op. 28 No. 15 ("Raindrop") is in D flat isn't it?

im not sure of my favourites, deppends on the mood and character of the piece
but GOD I HATE C MAJOR AND A MINOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I haven't played a single piece in c major or a minor with my actual piano teacher im not expecting to do it, they are kind of "plain" i just hate them.
Keys i like:
Ab major: one of my favorites, i think about beethoven's op.110, schumann's carnaval... the slow mvnt of the pathetique.
C# major: don't ask me why, but i preffer this one instead of Db major (it's kind of stupid), it's a psyco thing, where i preffer to imagine a C sharpened that a D lowered., im think about the p&f from the WTC.
Eb major: another wonderfull, as major and also his minor relative (c minor) specially to works with drama, im thinking in mozart's K457, chopin op.25 no 12
G major: i used to hate it, but now im starting to like it (goldberg variatons) any piece of that kind.
That is i think..

magnezium;
arrrr yes of course!!
whoopsy, didn't think of that one...

Hey Jem, Havn't talked to you in a while

I send you an email.

Im sure only a handful of the millions of people that watched XXX actually realized that Raindrops was included in it!

F Minor!!! it just has a special sound to it

C-# MINOR!!!!! Fun to play, nice to listen to, C-# MINOR has it all. Don't ask me why, its just the one that I like the best. I guess that its just that somewhat dark atmosphere that it can set while still remaining quite beautiful.

Favourite keys: c# minor, bb minor
Least favourite keys: b minor, D major

This is an interesting thread and it has piqued my curiosity...

To those of you who have a definite preference for one key over the others: to what do you owe this preference? Is it something you can put your finger on? Is it a preference formed by the pieces you've played in those keys? Or do you think it is something inate to the key? When you hear a piece of music, can you identify the key without reading the score? If you can't, how do you know when you are listening to your favorite key?

I ask all this because, as you know, on well-tempered pianos the scales are all relative, the intervals between notes are the same in all major scales, etc. So, do you think that different keys produce different overtones that affect the quality of the scale? Do you think that each root tone has a distinct character?

Questions, questions, questions.

Bernard:

Yes, that puzzles me too. My father had no sense of absolute pitch and yet vehemently asserted all his life that sharp keys sounded brighter than flat ones. We tested it on several occasions and he admitted he couldn't tell what keys were being played. Nonetheless he persisted in his view. I therefore concluded that his opinion had no basis in sound, but had something to do with remembered childhood association, probably with pieces he had once played. Another explanation is that he found the grips of the sharp keys either easier on the hand or easier to read from scores.

I suppose one could ask the interesting question, "Would the Black Key Study written in six sharps provoke a different reaction in key sensitive people ?"

Yes, that's an interesting question - I think we should gather a bunch of pianists in in room, and have 2 listen to the original, 2 listen to the sharp version, have 2 placebos, and see who thinks what

To answer one of Bernard's original questions - d minor became my favorite key once I realized one day that my 3 favorite pieces of all time - The Art of the Fugue, Mozarts' Requiem Mass, and the 9th are all in d minor

Good questions, Bernard and Ted.
The key of Cminor tends to send chills up my spine more often than any other key...but I'm not sure why. I can usually identify a piece in that key although sometimes I've been fooled...Mozart's piano concerto no20 still to this day sounds like C minor to me.
I think there must be some actual physiologic change(a positive one) that takes place with certain keys more than others.( release of endorphins?)

i can say something about.

Pitches are also frecuency, so maybe different frecuencies makes different reactions on different people.
We know that the tune is "well tempered", but we also know that the frecuencies of the sound of the C major scale are lower than in a C# major, and so on....

I don't know... C major by far is my favorite key. I think it is because of the versatility of C major. C major can be suitable for a variety of emotions and textures: for instance, triumph (last movement of Beethoven's Fifth), happiness and congeniality (all of Beethoven's Opus 2 Number 3 sonata), defeat and acceptance (end of the first movement of Beethoven's Opus 111 sonata), introspection, simplicity, and peacefulness (Beethoven's Opus 111 sonata) and even sadness (if done correctly, C major can definitely do a good job of this... examples escape me right now).

Also, to me, it seems like C major has a ring of purity about it that none of the other keys have. I see this purity in the second movement of Beethoven Opus 111 and I think this purity is integral to this piece; I could never imagine this piece in any other key.

And each of the twenty-four major and minor keys have their own distinctive personalities; I probably would not be able to tell between two different keys some of the time, but I can usually tell C major from a mile away.

Actually, I don't know if it's just mental, but to me, F sharp major and G flat major do seem to have distinctive personalities. I tried thinking of Beethoven's Opus 78 sonata in G flat major as I played through it and the entire thing felt different somehow. I did the same thing for the Schubert Opus 90 Impromptu and the piece took
on a different personality. And I did the same thing for Nedda's aria from Pagliacci (F sharp major) and again, the piece took on a different personality. G flat seems less dark and haunting than F sharp major does to me.

I also do feel a distinction between the personalities of C sharp major/D flat major, A flat minor/G sharp minor, D sharp minor/E flat minor, and A sharp minor/B flat minor.

Interesting thread, guys.

I often wondered when looking at pieces why the composers chose the key they have. I always put it off to just composing around other instruments which are not in concert key (C maj). That key would seem the most logical to compose with on piano for simplicity sake, as except with the introduction of accidentals or passing notes, all your playing would be on the whites. It is interesting to hear that people have emotions evoked by certain keys. Beyond the obvious, such as upbeat compositions in major keys, and more meloncholy in minor, I have to say that experimenting with jazz chords as opened up a whole new world to me of chord voicings, and the emotions they invoke.

I'm spending a lot of time in Eb lately, as I just love the way my piano resonates when playing something like Ebmaj7 & adding a relative minor passing chord (C-7), resolving such a passage to Ab and then B7 (a simple Root, vi iv V7 chord passage). In accompanying my son on sax (which is concert Eb, coupled with a lot of jazz & blues compositions being centered around Eb or Bb) I've developed an appreciation for keys other than the obvious. My youngest son, on violin, also puts me in D maj or G maj keys as well.

So when you look at key signatures, it is interesting to see that there's so much more at play here than simply considering other instruments. Tghere's very muc an emotional side to this as well, as is obvious by the posts on this thread.

Jamie

This doesn't make sense to me.
Maybe because I'm relatively new to classical music.

I understand that before equal temperament, ET, some keys had more dissonance than others.
Keys could be chosen by composers to fit the mood of their music.
Some keys had a pure clear beatless sound evoking emotions of calm, happiness and stability.
Some keys had a disturbing and mystical sound.
I thought that in ET errors have been averaged so all keys have an equal amount of error, or beating.
Wouldn't it follow that they all would therefor have equal emotional feeling?

So assuming we are all talking about pianos tuned to today's ET, I speculate that the feelings we have about keys is actually related to how they physically feel under our fingers. Or the powerful emotional content a skilled composer was able to put into a particular piece of music, which happens to be in a particular key.
So then we identify that emotion with that key.

Or is this just the engineer in me talking?
I seem to be out of step with most of your posts.

This is a very interesting thread!
My favourite keys are Eb+ and G+, and D minor. I don't know why. I have sort of an unreliable sense of absolute pitch, but perfect pitch (that is, listening to a piece and determining what key it's in) has always been a strength of mine, although in all honesty I don't know what good it is! In any case, I definitely agree that different keys have different moods. C minor is angry, F minor is sad, and I tend to find G major particularly wistful.

To me each key has its own "color" even when the piano is ET. When I hear something I usually can't name the key, but I can almost always play it on the piano. My hand "feels" the shape of the notes based on what my ear hears.

Some say that the different keys all have the same "color" in an ET piano, as opposed to HT pianos which have lots of color. I don't quite buy this argument because it is pretty narrowly scoped to keyboard instruments. Choirs, orchestras, and string ensembles can tune on the fly and they tend to tune to whatever key they are playing in rather than enforce some arbitrary tuning system. Eb in some historical tuning systems sounds way out of tune to my ears. I doubt the ensembles of the day played/sang Eb so badly out of tune, in fact, I suspect they tuned so that it sounded perfectly in tune. But, you don't tend to hear HT proponents complaining about "colorless" ensembles who play in tune all the time.

As far as choosing keys for pieces, composers had different reasons. Some were thinking about the ranges of the instruments, as was suggested. Others had favorite keys that suggested different moods or meanings to them. And many times they chose a key because it helps the piece fit into a work of a larger whole. For instance, Bach changed some of the keys of his preludes and fuges so that he had one in every key. He also changed the key of the Bm Partita (AKA French Overture) to Bm because originally was in the same key as another Partita.

Ryan

I just thought of this: I'm wondering if some of the moods assigned to keys have more to do with some unconscious association we have for the different LETTERS of the alphabet than for the actual sound of the key!? I've often thought of Eb as a very round key with great depth; but you know... when you look at it, "Eb" actually looks pregnant doesn't it!! Hm.

Hm. Hm. Hm.

Kenny:

In that case we're both out of step. Unless the listener has a sense of pitch acute enough to know what keys are being played I can't see how sound alone could possibly imply different responses. What about pieces using many different keys or no keys at all ? Does a key sensitive person experience a kaleidoscopic series of contrasting reactions according to the chord of the moment ? Isn't a "key" just an arbitrary group of notes, a partition of seven closely related frequencies out of the twelve ?

The issues of physical positions and appearance of scores are clearly quite independent from aural considerations, although I could understand how associations could be made with sound early in life provided a sense of pitch was present.

I have met quite a few players who habitually use mostly either the black keys or the white ones, and consequently gravitate from habit to doing everything in one key. People who begin by picking up tunes a lot seem to end up like this.

From a scientific point of view the question is probably quite clear-cut but from an imaginative, subjective angle it may be very complicated.

I like Bb, I don't know why. Maybe just because it uses all the black keys. It's neat.