Less common keys

[Mario]

If you want to explore some of the more exotic (but quite widely used) harmonic devices used by Classical and Romantic composers you could try the three sorts of Augmented Sixth chord (Italian, French and German as they have come to be known). They're often used to approach a 6/4 5/3 cadence or just a 6/4 chord before a cadenza. Another very poignant device is the Neapolitan chord, much loved of Baroque composers for emphasising pathos. (eg a first inversion B flat major chord before a cadence in A minor. Some composers get carried away and twiddle away in the major key a semitone above the minor key tonic note for a bar or two before finally arriving at a cadence in the home key.

If all the above sounds twaddle, I could either find examples or write some out and try to photograph them and post them up.

ardcarp thank you.

No sycophancy I promise you, but like Joseph K, you provide me with the motivation to continue, instead of thinking, maybe I’ve left it all too late.

I’ve been dying to find out for years what the Neopolitan chord is. And even I know what you mean by a 6/4 - 5/3 cadence.

Thank you for providing me with the impetus I need to attack Grade VI.

Best wishes,

Mario

[Mario]

I wonder if they think yes, an augmented sixth would work well there or is it more a bit of noodling and think ‘that sounds good I’ll write it down while I remember it - now how did it go?’.

I really do love the humour in this question, It really would be good to know the answer.

Mario

[Ein Heldenleben]

May I please thank all contributors to this thread for their helpful advice?

I asked for works in the more remote keys, and amongst others, the Chopin suggestion by Ein Heldenleben in #2 yielded some good ones. In my collection, there is the

Ballade No 3 in Ab Maj Op 47
Ballade No 4 in F min Op 52
Barcarolle Op 60, the Prelude No 13 Op 28 & Nocturne No 2 Op 15, all in F# Maj (this, to me, sounds like a nasty key to work with)
Mazurka in Bb Min Op 24 No 4
Nocturne No 2 in Db Maj Op 27

That should be enough to be getting on with!

Thank you all for correcting my mistakes. I must learn the difference between Cb and Cbb (thanks Dave 2002), and the difference between an octave and a min 7th.
Thanks to Joseph K and Richard B for teaching me about progressive tonality and Picardy 3rds. Hope I haven’t left anyone out.

Best wishes to all and never allow newcomers to doubt the validity and usefulness of this Forum.

Mario

Funnily enough Chopin though the sharp ( or flat keys ) often easier musically . He would start students with an E major scale rather than C major. He thought E major suited the shape of the hand better . We tend to start with C major because it’s possibly easier to read from score to keyboard - lacking sharps and flats . I much prefer playing B major and E major scales to C major or D major. There’s a much easier passage of the thumb (for me ) in those scales .
Although F sharp major (as in the Bacarolle ) is difficult to read , with all those sharps , it’s not a bad key to play in. The technical and musical challenges of the Bacarolle wouldn’t be solved by transposing it. It is an absolutely wonderful piece . More difficult, and I must have practiced it hundreds of times, is the ( same key enharmonically) G flat major (Black key ) Etude . Thought to be a parody of Chopsticks- it’s the piano equivalent of a tongue twister. I read once Myra Hess had a party piece of playing it in any key at the drop of a hat .

[ahinton]

... or, as an extension of this, the way Strauss will often wander off in some seemingly random harmonic direction before suddenly revealing an unsuspected "wormhole" back to the tonic - as in the Rosenkavalier waltz music very obviously.

Indeed; it almost became a trademark of his!

[ahinton]

Although F sharp major (as in the Bacarolle ) is difficult to read , with all those sharps , it’s not a bad key to play in. The technical and musical challenges of the Bacarolle wouldn’t be solved by transposing it. It is an absolutely wonderful piece . More difficult, and I must have practiced it hundreds of times, is the ( same key enharmonically) G flat major (Black key ) Etude . Thought to be a parody of Chopsticks- it’s the piano equivalent of a tongue twister.

For a real Chopinesque tongue-twister, try Godowsky's combination of Chopin's two études in G flat major - the "Black Key" one and the one that's come to be known as the "Butterfly" one (though "Butterfingers" would be more appropriate were I ever to try it myself) - oh and, while we're about it, all those nauseating nicknames given to Chopin pieces by others, never by Chopin himself, the funniest (to me, anyway) being the "Revolutionary" étude, given that every one of tghe Op. 10 set is "revolutionary" in its way!...

[RichardB]

I wonder if they think yes, an augmented sixth would work well there or is it more a bit of noodling and think ‘that sounds good I’ll write it down while I remember it - now how did it go?’.

If by "they" you mean composers, I would say it's an essential part of any composer's (self-)training to be able to remember "how it went", although the image of the composer noodling at the keyboard and thinking "that sounds good" and writing it down doesn't correspond to reality except in old movies - it's much more likely that the noodling goes on in the composer's head, often not even consciously, and the keyboard is used, if at all, to check the "inner ear" against the outer.

[Bryn]

If by "they" you mean composers, I would say it's an essential part of any composer's (self-)training to be able to remember "how it went", although the image of the composer noodling at the keyboard and thinking "that sounds good" and writing it down doesn't correspond to reality except in old movies - it's much more likely that the noodling goes on in the composer's head, often not even consciously, and the keyboard is used, if at all, to check the "inner ear" against the outer.

Are you accusing Jimmy Durante of lying?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Jimmy+Durante+the+lost+chord&t=newext&atb=v304-1&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D8bFeBX2v-Pg

[Ein Heldenleben]

For a real Chopinesque tongue-twister, try Godowsky's combination of Chopin's two études in G flat major - the "Black Key" one and the one that's come to be known as the "Butterfly" one (though "Butterfingers" would be more appropriate were I ever to try it myself) - oh and, while we're about it, all those nauseating nicknames given to Chopin pieces by others, never by Chopin himself, the funniest (to me, anyway) being the "Revolutionary" étude, given that every one of tghe Op. 10 set is "revolutionary" in its way!...

I had a “go “ at that once . The less said the better . The Godowsky studies are the only Ones I know where he devises preparatory” studies “ for the study itself.
Yes the Chopin etudes are revolutionary in every way. The way he explores keys and harmonic possibilities just in the opening C major wrist buster. Worth staggering through just to glimpse his genius…

[Serial_Apologist]

...or one could mention Prokofiev in his neo-classical mood. (But that doesn't really count because by that time the trad rules have been largely binned, and in his Classical Symphony he's playing rather naughtily with them.)

I remember it being mentioned when Prokofiev was COTW that he had been influenced by Richard Strauss - which seemed utterly implausible at the time to me, but one can see his side-slipping harmonic movements (as they've been called) as related to what RichardB is talking about in the famous Rosenkavalier walts and other mature Strauss works.

[ahinton]

I had a “go “ at that once . The less said the better . The Godowsky studies are the only Ones I know where he devises preparatory” studies “ for the study itself.
Yes the Chopin etudes are revolutionary in every way. The way he explores keys and harmonic possibilities just in the opening C major wrist buster. Worth staggering through just to glimpse his genius…

Thos preparatory studies grew out of the rationale for the entire project which began when Godowsky was encountering problems with the G# minor study in thirds Op. 25 No. 6 and he did this for it and then wrote a paraphrase on it; so began the vast cycle of 54 studies on Chopin's études (17 for left hand alone) commencing in 1894 and continuing over the next couple of decades or so. Few pianists performed any of them for many years until Jorge Bolet and Michel Béroff began to work on them and then Carlo Grante, followed by Marc-André Hamelin, Francesco Libetta and Emanuele Delucchi, added the entire cycle to their respective repertoires. To my mind, any pianist who can really play the "48", the last five Beethoven Sonatas and the études of Chopin, Liszt, Alkan and Godowsky is pretty much equipped to play almost anything including Finnissy.

But I digress from the topic - so shut up me!...

[ahinton]

I remember it being mentioned when Prokofiev was COTW that he had been influenced by Richard Strauss - which seemed utterly implausible at the time to me, but one can see his side-slipping harmonic movements ()as they've been called) as related to what RichardB is talking about in the Der Rosenkavalier walts and other Strauss works.

Yes - and that kind of thing is present in Strauss from before Salome right through to and including Vier Letzte Lieder...

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes - and that kind of thing is present in Strauss from before Salome right through to and including Vier Letzte Lieder...

Interesting to note how this way of restless modulation differed from Reger's in that the latter's seemed more to arise from his chromatic manner of note-leading - using voicings to free up the harmonic sphere, leading to passing ambiguity, and often to an unexpected resolution or false resolution. It's always struck me how Schoenberg drew on both approaches, especially around the time of the move away from tonality - some of the songs (in particular) being vertically conceived, ostensibly, others horizontally, using that post-Wagnerian way of resolving through expanding suspensions and appogiaturas. I often wonder of AS's cryptic remark about having himself forgotten as much as he had learned from Strauss reflected his later attitude, conditioned (obviously, it seems to me) by his preference for the 12-tone serial method of composition.

Anyway, slight diversion from thread topic - or sideways movement!

[Mario]

If it helps, I don’t particularly mind if the topic meanders into other areas.

Thanks to ahinton, I’ve just looked up Michael Finnissy on You Tube. His PC No 6 came up here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PRWQk4bbQs&t=48s

Good grief! Aaaaarggghhhh! Where do you start to analyse it, listen to it, appreciate it, ahem… enjoy it?

Back to resolving Perfect and Plagal cadences for me, I’m afraid!

I’ll humbly bow out now. I’ve learnt much from this thread, and I really must stop before biting off more than I can chew.

Mario

[RichardB]

I often wonder of AS's cryptic remark about having himself forgotten as much as he had learned from Strauss reflected his later attitude

Strauss was always committed to finding his way back to the tonic, or, in a more general sense, for something unresolved to sound unresolved (as at the end of Also sprach Zarathustra), whereas Schoenberg at a certain point saw no further need for tonal resolution, and then set himself the task of reproducing the structural functions of harmony using other means, even as Varèse was going another step further in seeing no further need for those either.

[RichardB]

I’ve just looked up Michael Finnissy on You Tube. His PC No 6 came up here

Good grief! Aaaaarggghhhh! Where do you start to analyse it, listen to it, appreciate it, ahem… enjoy it?

When I first encountered Michael Finnissy's work at the age of 19 or 20, around the time that he was writing pieces like that, my feeling was "Good grief! Aaaaarggghhhh! This is some of the most intensely liberating music I've ever heard, and I need to hear and see as much of it as I can because it makes almost all the other music being produced in the UK sound insipid and conservative." So it was and remains infinitely more important to me than perfect or plagal cadences. Just saying. (Don't try to analyse it, you'll get nowhere)