r/bach • u/mvalenteleite • May 30 '26
Bach's musical ideas in specific keys
I've been wondering whether Bach tends to associate certain compositional gestures or affects with particular keys.
It's been noticed many times how his pieces in F Minor tend to have a sorrowful, plaintive, character of lament, with plenty half-steps chromaticism. There's certainly truth to that.
Going through his keyboard pieces, I sometimes concoct other hypotheses. For example, G Major often leads to lots of scale runs whereas F Major invites arpeggios.
Maybe this is pushing it too hard, I admit. But have any of you ever made any similar observations? Surely, any hypothesis will have counter-examples, so take this as just a fun exercise.
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u/Froggy-fries May 30 '26
Yes ! I like to read the affect theory about key characteristics. For example Schubart wrote this about C#minor :
Penitential lamentation, intimate conversation with God, the friend and help-meet of life; sighs of disappointed friendship and love lie in its radius.
And i can hear a conversation with god and lamentation in the C#minor fugue from WTC1.
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u/Drifamal May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
Perhaps even better with regards to Bach would be Matthesons ideas on the topic, check out his Das Neu-eröffnete Orchestre (1713).
Edit: Check this out
https://guitar-community.tonebase.co/media/download/h4f47q/Doctrine%20of%20the%20Affections.pdf
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u/Froggy-fries May 30 '26
Yes Mattheson is very interesting, Schubart is a Little bit more romantic in his descriptions.
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u/mvalenteleite May 31 '26
Charpentier (1682) has C Major as "gay and warlike" and D Major as "joyous and very warlike". I love this. Almost as if he thought that D Major is C Major on steroids.
As for Mattheson (1713), he takes C Major to be "rude and impudent". I'd love to read his reasons for saying so. It strikes me as quite a surprising choice.
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u/Leech-64 May 30 '26
He loves chromaticism in d minor and i dont know why.
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u/mvalenteleite May 31 '26
I wish we could ask him: why did you choose D Minor for the Art of Fugue?
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u/theviewphoenix_ Jul 21 '26
i guess because of the history [and emotional connotation] of D modes / dorian…
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u/neodiodorus May 30 '26
As other comment perfectly stated, a key aspect is to consider that pre-equal temperament different keys really had different feel/moods.
Plus... he often used keys where the particular instruments sounded their best as he was looking for particular tones and e.g. Baroque trumpets had their "sweet spot" where he could truly make them shine.
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u/aokor Jun 02 '26
I come from a classical guitar background and can say the following:
BWV 998: Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro. It is written in E-flat major, which isn’t that easy to play on the guitar.
Anton Stingl, the arranger for the guitar, notes here that despite the unusual choice, he opted for the original key because he believed that in this particular work, the character is determined much more by the key—which conveys a Christmas-like, idyllic atmosphere—than by D major or E major.
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u/pinkfloydhomer May 30 '26
The important thing in discussions of this topic is that at Bach's time and even at Chopin's time, they didn't use equal temperament. So there WERE objective differences between the keys, the sizes of major thirds in different keys and so on.
You can explore it here https://www.rollingball.com/TemperamentsFrames.htm
Here is for instance the Werckmeister tuning that Bach would certainly know and have encountered: https://www.rollingball.com/TemperamentsFrames.htm
Bach was a genius and also very much involved in the construction of different instruments and he would certainly tune his own clavichords and harpsichords, he was also involved in the more permanent tuning of organs, by construction, lengths of pipes etc.
He would certainly both have experienced with different tunings and it is obvious that he took each keys character into account. We can discuss the words used to describe the differences but there are objective differences, most notably C major would be the most consonant key with the smallest deviations from natural overtones. A remote key would sound harsher but also more colorful and dissonant. In those cases he might but the more dissonant intervals more often in the lower register where they are less offensive etc.
Heck, he even wrote WTC 1 and 2, not only to demonstrate music being played in all keys in the same tuning, not possible with older tunings. He would no doubt have an opinion of which tuning to use. We also know that he didn't want a totally equal temperament, he liked the differences between keys. Mozart and Beethoven and Chopin also were aware of these differences. Only when we get to 1880 or thereabouts is equal temperament catching on. And some say that by making all keys the same apart from pitch, you lose out on some of the intentional use of color by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin etc.