Why do Composers select particular keys for their music?

What key did Arnold Schoenberg tend to write in?

What is that piece that starts off the video? Sent a chill down my spine when I heard it!

Great video! What's the music playing at the beginning with organ and choir?

Yeah! I would!

You got me in two seconds with the opening of the St John Passion. Bach did something wonderful that even gets this unbelievers heart a flutter and the tears well up in my with that wonderful music. The turmoil in that opening chorus with the wailing oboes, almost crying grabs me everytime. something that Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Bruckner, Puccini, Berlioz and the other romantics and modernists can NEVER do.

The Key? Who cares. The music says it all.

Shouldn't it be a total of 84+ "keys" since there's 7 modes that incorporate the diatonic scale? What about scales like harmonic minor/major and double harmonics + it's modes (Ultraphrygian, etc), or Romanian minor (Altered Dorian), and all that good stuff?

Are these all keys? Are there actually like a billion keys? Or is it just cut off at Ionian/Aeolian for some reason? Seems to me there should either be 12 keys or a lot more than 24

Chords are built from the notes of a scale, which follows a fixed pattern of intervals e.g. for major scale: whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. So the key really shouldn't matter, only the scale type.

Great video!

D is a pitch, NOT a key. D major is a key. We must always include 'major.' I would add - master composers did not 'choose' a key. The creation REQUIRES a specific key.

whats the answer when you mention composers are not choosing B major for their works?

Good topic and video! Thanks.

I think another very important consideration here instrumental range, historical range, and instruments’ timbral registers.

For example, suppose you have a melody you want to feature on English horn: English horn goes down to concert E. If your melody keyed in G, say, goes below that E, you either have to modify that melody, recast it on a different instrument, or raise it to the key of A, say.

Similarly, flutes can play well below the second-space C, and in fact sound very rich in that range, but they’re also very quiet in that range. So you can move the melody up an octave, but in that range, it won’t have that rich timbre you’re envisioning. So, you may get better results moving it up a perfect fifth instead, which changes the key, obviously.

Historical range is another important consideration: Classical-Era bassoons had a much-more-limited range (with good tone and intonation) than modern instruments. So, we might wonder why Haydn, say, recast a bassoon melody (apparently) to avoid notes above a certain pitch, that we expect to be well within the normal bassoon range, but it’s out-of-range for bassoons of the era.

I’m a violinist, and D major was my first scale, since it is the violin’s best key.

Very interesting video. I myself compose exclusively in B flat minor.

Brilliant Video generating thoughtful and educational comments!!! Thank you.

if you just consider diatonic modes and excluding enharmonic equivalents there are 84 keys

My favorites are Eb Major and Bb Major.

On guitar and related instruments, keys really matter. This is especially true in classical, rock, Latin and folk, as they all use open chords (chords that include open strings). Open chords have distinct characters - open D sounds more tinkly, open E sound muscular. In jazz and great American song book open strings tend to be avoided and the choice of key is less critical.

Would you say this also rings true within pop music, in songs that only use 3 or 4 chords?

Schoenberg selects either all of them or none of them.

as someone with perfect pitch the key something is in totally affects what i hear from the piece. something originally in Eb major but played in G major loses a lot of the piece's warmth.

My favorite keys are G major, D major, C major, E major, B major, F major, F#/Gb major, E minor, Bb Major, Ab major, A minor, D minor, G# minor, C Dorian, D Dorian, G Dorian, A Dorian.

what makes you think they only played two modes?

I've always associated colors with each key but I dont have synesthesia.
C - light yellow
Db - Orange
D - golden
Eb - turquoise (bluish green)
E - Green
F - Purple
Gb - Blackish purple
G - Brown
Ab - Crimson red
A - red
Bb - Light blue
B - Blue

It's the "pathetique" sonata not the "loud"sonata

Subscribed due to this wonderful video. Thank you!

Wow, this is such an important video! Thank you for sharing the knowledge on this topic!
It should be taught in music class at school as a fundamental lesson!
It explain so much as how the whole piece presents to the audience.
The key is the corner stone.

i dont have perfect pitch but i can definetly hear diferent moods on different keys

Where can I find the next three videos on this topic?

I've always wondered about this, and it confuses my why it's not talked about so much. But I've been thinking about it all day today and it's enlightening to hear your research and thoughts.

I've never liked C, G or F. For me those are the bland suburbs of tonality. Bb, A and D are pleasant enough, and Ab, B, E, C# and F# are wonderful. The greatest key, however, ever to make landfall on the human tympanum is Eb. It is the diamond & gold, the caviar & champagne, the Shakespeare & Rembrandt of sound waves & pitch classes!

How is the classical music at the beginning called?

I can add a couple of morsels:
The soprano solo at the end of Act II of La Rondine and the aria "Signore Ascolta" from Turandot are both pentatonic and both in the key of Gb major.
Betcha Puccini associated Gb with the pentatonic mode, since Gb pentastonic uses the five black keys.

The gypsy chorus from La Traviata and the gypsy witch's aria from Il Trovatore are both in e minor.
Betcha Verdi associated e minor with the violin, since e minor is an efficient key on the violin, and in turn associated the violin with gypsies.

I'm not going to say this is misleading, but this is actually false. Psychologically, our hearing is parallel to the 12 tone color well. C is warmest (red) and therefore loves songs get constantly written in C. Look at ANY Eurythmics song that speak SPECIFICALLY about love or being in love.

A-flat is cold (blue). Songs of death and estrangement get written in Ab. (See Sting's "Every Breath You Take.")

F and F# are greens. Very open sound. (Classical and Baroque pastorals. See Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony in F. Or Mariah Carey's "Green with envy" Cant' Let Go.

Look me up on my main place here: The Acoustic Rabbit Hole

I'm getting the feeling that this guy likes Beethoven

Great video.
I 'd like to add some thoughts:
1. Not all keys sound the same. Given that the adoption of the equal temperament was gradual, in many points in time different keys sounded different. In Palestrina's time, A minor contained different intervals than, say, Bb minor. The two keys had different characters and "colors", quite audibly.
2. The feel and the layout of the instrument that the composer uses to compose must have played a role. The natural tendencies and the ease or difficulty that different keys present to the hands, to the fingers, affect the outcome. At least for other kinds of music this is blatantly obvious, from the blues to jazz to rebetiko to heavy metal
3. The ranges of instruments and/or voices also play a role. If one is writing for instrument X and wants certain notes to stand out (as high notes, as low notes etc) and they know the range and capabilities of said instrument, they choose a key that fits these needs. Same goes for voices.
4. If a composer want their work to, say, modulate for a part to a key that is three sharps away from the main key of the work, it is not very comfortable to choose to compose in, say, F# major. That would produce a modulation to D# major, and nobody really wants to write and read so many constant double flats, and composers are aware of the fact that this choice would possibly make rehearsals less productive and efficient. On the flipside, they would prefer to compose in Gb major if there is a modulation that would add many additional flats etc.

So, playing piano SOLO, i may as well play every mode or key using only the white keys (e.g. A minor or C major) since the tonic note doesn't really matter a jot?

Beethoven wrote his first piano conerto in B-flat major; his second concerto was written in C major. However, the date of publication of his first concerto (in B-flat) was delayed for years, being published well after the concerto he wrote second (in C).

One thing I've often wondered about is that, as all classical works are named after the key they were composed in, does it mean that the composition alwaysstays in the same key throughout? For example a symphony in D major, consisting of three movements - is every part written in D major? For sure it can change between the major and its relative minor key (in this case B minor), but can it include other key changes?

Not sure why Tchaikovsky chose B flat minor for his 1st Piano Concerto, but I like it.

Two points: (1) the key matters to those people with absolute pitch (admittedly they’re somewhat rare); (2) the key is often chosen because the human voice has a relatively narrow range compared with instruments—this is especially true in opera, of course.

I love E major, F# major, C# major, Bb major, Eb major, Ab major, Db major and C major. Even if a pair of keys are the same harmonically, I don’t really give an f-sharp about it sounds, I care about how it looks on sheet.

I think you might have missed a very basic point, play the British National anthem in C and people singing it turn purple, play it in F or G they don't.