The affective properties of keys in instrumental music from the late

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University of Massachusetts Amherst
ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst
Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014
2010
The affective properties of keys in instrumental
music from the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries
Maho A. Ishiguro
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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THE AFFECTIVE PROPERTIES OF KEYS IN INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC
FROM THE LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES

A Thesis Presented

by

MAHO A. ISHIGURO

Submitted to the Graduate School of the
University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF MUSIC

September 2010

Music
© Copyright by Maho A. Ishiguro 2010
All Rights Reserved
THE AFFECTIVE PROPERTIES OF KEYS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

A Thesis Presented

by

MAHO A. ISHIGURO

Approved as to style and content by:

________________________________________
Miriam Whaples, Chair

________________________________________
Brent Auerbach, Member

________________________________________
Robert Eisenstein, Member

________________________________________
Jeffrey Cox, Department Chair Music
DEDICATION

I dedicate my thesis to my father, Kenzo Ishiguro.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my advisor, Prof. Miriam Whaples from the Music
Department at UMass Amherst for her endless patience and guidance throughout
the past years. I am forever grateful to many of my friends for their enormous
support in the process of writing this thesis: William Wood, Sean Norton, Steven
Christensen, Rachel Mascetta, and Aaron Chandler-Worth.

v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................v

LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………………….……..viii

CHAPTERS

I.INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................1

II. HISTORY OF AFFECTIVE PROPERTIES OF KEYS .................................................4

Section 1: Octave Species and the Ancient Greek .......................................4
Section 2: Modes in the Middle Ages and Renaissance ............................12
Section 3: Keys in the Baroque, Classical and Romantic Periods .............21

Classical and Romantic Periods ..........................................................26

III. AFFECTIVE PROPERTIES OF KEYS IN THE LATE NINETEENTH AND
EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES ...............................................................................38

Section 1: Music Scholars ...........................................................................38

Adolf Bernhard Marx, Theory and Practice of Musical
Composition, 1853 ..............................................................................38
Edward Hanslick, The Beautiful in Music, 1854 ................................40
John W. Moore, Complete Encyclopedia of Music, 1854 ...................43
Henry Edward Krehbiel, How to Listen to Music; Hints
and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art, 1869 ........................46
Ernst Pauer, the Elements of the Beautiful in Music, 1876 ................47
George Grove, A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1880 .............51
Edmund Whomes, “Key Colour,” Proceedings of the
Musical Association, 13th Sess. 1886-1887 .......................................53
Franz Gronings, “Key Colour,” The Musical Times and Singing
Class Circular, Nov. and Dec. 1886, Nov. 1887 and Apr., 1888 ......56
Hugo Riemann, On the Imagination of Tone and Analysis of
Bach’s Wohltemperirtes Clavier, 1893 ..............................................61
Albert Lavignac, Music and Musicians, 1907 ....................................76
Ralph Dunstan, A Cyclopedic Dictionary of Music, 1925 .................78
Sir Donald Francis Tovey, Beethoven and “Tonality” (1928) ...........82
Otto Rudolph Ortmann, “What is Tone-Quality?” The
Musical Quarterly, 1935 ....................................................................84
Harry Farjeon, “The Colour of Keys, and The Color of Notes,”
vi
The Musical Times, May and July 1938 ............................................85
Percy A. Scholes, The Oxford Companion to Music, 1955 ................90
Hans Keller, “Key Characteristics,” Tempo New Series,
No.40, 1956 ........................................................................................93
Donald N. Ferguson, Music as Metaphor: the Elements of Expression,
1960 ....................................................................................................97
James O. Young, “Key, Temperament and Musical Expression,”
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1991 ............................98

Section 2: Scientists’ Views and Approach .............................................102

Hermann von Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tones, 1863 ...........102
Gene Revesz, Introduction to the Psychology of Music, 1953 .........107
Phillip Ewart Vernon, “The Individuality of Keys,” The
Musical Times, 1942 .........................................................................110

Section 3: Composers’ Views ...................................................................113

Vincent d’Indy .................................................................................114
Composers and Synaesthesia in the Twentieth Century .................116
Arthur Bliss .....................................................................................120
Arnold Schoenberg .........................................................................122
Alexander Scriabin ..........................................................................127
Olivier Messiaen .............................................................................132

IV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION ..........................................................................141

BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................145
vii
LIST OF TABLES
Table Page

1. Ernst Pauer’s Analysis of Keys in Certain Compositions .....................................................48

2. Hugo Riemann’s Interpretations of Keys in J.S.Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier Vol.1. ..........63

3. Analysis of Hugo Riemann’s Interpretations of Keys (Using the Sharp-Flat Principle) ..........72

4. Albert Lavignac’s Analysis of Characteristics of Keys ........................................................77

5. Ralph Dunstan’s Analysis of Characteristics of Keys (from A Cyclopedic Dictionary of Music,
1925) ...................................................................................................................................80

6. Harry Farjeon’s Analysis of Characteristics of Keys ...........................................................87

7. Key-color description by Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin (from Scholes’s Oxford Companion
to Music, 1955). ...................................................................................................................92

viii
CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The concept of affective properties of keys is based on the assertion that different
tonalities are able to provide particular moods to music. Discussions regarding the
existence and validity of this phenomenon have always been controversial because of the
lack of universal agreement and satisfactory explanations for its occurrence.
Nevertheless, references to key characteristics have appeared in various fields of study
over many centuries: the Greek doctrine of ethos, the writings of Guido d’Arezzo, Jean-
Philippe Rameau’s Traité de l’harmonie, scribbles in Beethoven’s sketches, and several
passages in Hermann von Helmholtz’s On the Sensation of Tones.
The attitudes and opinions towards key characteristics have varied in each period
of its history. Among the ancient Greeks and Romans, the characteristics of octave
species were discussed among philosophers, namely Plato, and Aristotle. They were
believed to influence moral development and were also associated with mysticism. In the
Middle Ages and Renaissance, references to key characteristics can be found in the
writings of numerous theorists, including Gioseffo Zarlino and John Cotton. The studies
and discussions of key characteristics in those periods became so well explored as to
result in the first appearance of a list of the characteristics of each mode.
In Germany and France especially, the discussion of key characteristics reached
its peak in the first half of the eighteenth century, when it was studied as a part of
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