What's your favourite circle of fifths?

[Guest]

I was listening to Ein Deutsches Requiem today and remembered how much I enjoy that great circle of fifths in the sixth movement.

Does anyone else have any similar moments which they enjoy?

[mercia]

if non-choral is allowed, the numerous examples in Mozart piano concertos are very enjoyable (IMO)

EDIT - I can't give chapter and verse because I don't have any scores in front of me. Would we all agree that CoF are usually instantly recognisable?

[pole_2_pole]

Mozart's Pachelbel's Canon

[Nick Armstrong]

Bars 23 - 25 in the slow movement of Brahms's First Piano Concerto...

[mercia]

it's a long time since I did 'O' level music. is the circle of fifths basically a device for getting you from one key to another distant key?

[antongould]

but surely your Masters in Music was more recent.....................................

[rauschwerk]

Bach: Brandenburg 3, bars 87-91. The bass has E-A-D in quavers, then over a long descending scale in quavers (Douglas Hofstadter likens this to one of those illusory Escher staircases which always returns to the starting level) the chords go: D7-G7-C7-F#7 (the usual jump across the diameter)-B7-E7-A7. When the bass reaches D, Bach puts a B flat chord above it making a kind of interrupted cadence and forestalling the expected return to the tonic (G). For me this is one of the highlights of a thoroughly enjoyable movement.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

it's a long time since I did 'O' level music. is the circle of fifths basically a device for getting you from one key to another distant key?

Not necessarily, mercs: RVW uses it to affirm the Tonality of the Second Group of his Fifth Symphony (bars 69-76; and in the Recap starting five bars before fig13). Up until this point, the Tonality has been shaded with various Modal "flavours" (Mixolydian, Aeolian, Dorian): here the composer celebrates the "unsullied" Diatonic major key by rejuvenating what had become a cliché.

[paradisum]

For me there is only one answer, and it's the very first instance of a circle of fifths being employed in a composition: Absolon Fili Mi by Josquin (written circa 1500), where the words "descend to the depths" are beautifully painted, moving from one flat (F) to five flats (D-flat). Very novel (for the time), unexpected and striking.

[amateur51]

Bars 23 - 25 in the slow movement of Brahms's First Piano Concerto...

Blimey, Calibs - can you whistle it for me, please?

[Nick Armstrong]

Blimey, Calibs - can you whistle it for me, please?

Yes!

If you stick it on, it's about halfway through the second piano entry in the slow movement.

(If you recall, the movement starts with a section just for orchestra, for 13 gorgeous adagio 6/4 bars... then a section of piano solo for 5 bars... then 2 bars of orchestra alone... then then the piano again joined after a bar by two descending notes from the horns in octaves: and then my circle of fifths bit with just cellos and basses for accompaniment )

[EdgeleyRob]

What's a circle of fifths ?

[Nick Armstrong]

What's a circle of fifths ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths

Usually, it's makes for a particularly gorgeous and heart-easing moment of modulation...

[EdgeleyRob]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths

Usually, it's makes for a particularly gorgeous and heart-easing moment of modulation...

Many thanks.Music theory is not my strong point clearly.

[french frank]

A bit more help needed here. I know what a fifth is. I know what (diagrammatically) the circle of fifths is. Does this mean that a composer works her (heh, heh) way through that circle, in its natural order, in a particular passage?