E flat major

[EdgeleyRob]

C Sharp Minor is the key for me.
Not particularly because I like music in that key,although I do.
For no other reason than that I like the sound of the words and the look of 4 x # on a stave.
This
excites me.
All very irrational.

[Petrushka]

The opening organ blast of Mahler's 8th is in E flat major.

[kea]

Oh please don't. Leaving aside the perceived merits of each of the 24 major and minor keys, those who have played (or attempted to pay) a load of Chopin on the piano will be aware that he likes keys with a lot of black notes. His particular brand of florid passage-work lies more easily under the fingers. Just think of the well-worn Fantaisie Impromptu in C sharp minor. It would be much harder in, for instance, A minor.

Indeed. The C major Etude Op. 10 no. 1, considered one of the most difficult, is easier if transposed to C-sharp major (I'm pretty sure one of the Godowsky studies on it does this). I think when trying to practice it in all twelve major keys I found the most difficult transposition to be A major.

(C-sharp major/D-flat major, which for some reason are two totally different keys in my head despite being acoustically identical—something to do with the chords and accidentals composers use when writing in them, maybe—are my favourite key for whatever reason.)

[cloughie]

The opening organ blast of Mahler's 8th is in E flat major.

The best bit of the symphony - the rest of it is ok though.

[ahinton]

Right on. Op 70 no 2 for me !!

Me too. I recently heard a wonderful performance of it by the Leonore trio as part of a three concert survey of all of Beethoven's piano trio works along with a David Matthews trio in each. Discussing afterwards it comparative neglect, the trio seemed to have concluded that, unlike the Ghost and Archduke, it doesn't have a nickname - which seemed to feel rather like saying "actually I haven't a clue why it's not performed more often"; in fact, I'd say it's Beethoven's finest work for that medium.

[ahinton]

I'm not at all convinced that any one starting off key is more important than any other. After all, the distribution of tones remains the same whatever the tonality. Register is I think more important. After that, in the classical tradition it all becomes a matter of modulation, key relationships, diversions from the given key and how far you're prepared to take them - if you're old fashioned and prefer the security of having keys to hang onto.

I'm with you there, except that one does not have to be old fashioned to have a practical involvement in tonality!

Personally I think keys should never have been invented. I can never find mine when I need them.

What you obviously prefer is an entry passcode - preferably, I presume, composed of twelve digits equal to one another.

[ahinton]

Some blind tests would be interesting.

"Blind"? Hmmm...

[ahinton]

... d'you know? - I think there are lots of jolly good pieces written in most of the available major and minor keys...

Not very much in f# minor perhaps - tho' there is that gorgeous Pavane by Louis Couperin. And Bach of course could always work wonders...

Haydn has a fine piano trio in that key (and another in E flat minor, which wasn't much used for such works in his day, I suspect).

[ahinton]

Indeed. The C major Etude Op. 10 no. 1, considered one of the most difficult, is easier if transposed to C-sharp major (I'm pretty sure one of the Godowsky studies on it does this).

It does - but it's no walk in the park to play (are any of the 54?), being for left hand alone.

The first two Elgar symphonies have been mentioned upthread and they are, of course, in closely related keys; I've long thought the second to be his finest achievement of all, but the first often feels that it's just that whenever I've just heard it! Packed as it is with distinctive and memorable ideas worked with steely logic to produce an astonishing narrative sweep in which not a single bar is superfluous, I always find things in it that I'd not noticed at a previous hearing; that kind of creative generosity of spirit I find most rewarding and exciting and to which I have often sought to aspire, however hopelessly (well, there's no harm in trying). Incidentally, there's a march-like motif in the second movement of the first symphony with two repeated crotchets at the same pitch (sorry - don't know how to paste music in here!) that finds itself renewed in the third symphony; not being intimately acquainted with (or in possession of a copy of) Elgar's copious sketched for the third, I cannot be sure if this was Elgar's or Payne's but I'm pretty certain that it's the former. When he began his third symphony, it had been more than 20 years since Elgar had written a symphony and his first two followed one another in quite quick succession - and the fact that Elgar had in any case composed very little music at all since his cello concerto and the three chamber works when he embarked on the symphony that he was never to complete suggests to me one reason why he semed to express grave doubts about the new symphony and I suspect that, have his health held up, it might have taken him much longer to write this work than his first two symphonies.

Anyway, back to E flat!