(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Music open thread: Music in G-sharp minor [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-03 “The circle of fifths is the...” That’s all I wrote three years ago for G-sharp minor, when I started this series. The idea was that as I came across music I liked, I would place those compositions in the appropriate open thread. The focus was to be music written by composers ignored for reasons other than the musical merit of their compositions, such as their gender or their race. Turns out both men and women composers hardly ever use G-sharp minor aside from fleeting modulations. There’s very little music primarily in G-sharp minor. It’s an awkward key for the traditional notation of traditional harmony. Even the enharmonic A-flat minor, despite its seven flats, I find easier for notating traditional harmony. With minor keys, the seventh step of the scale needs to be raised one semitone from the key signature for the dominant chord. In A-flat minor, that means G-flat is raised to G-natural. Consider a chord progression in which we go from minor one to some kind of two to a V7 a few times before ending on major one (Picardy third). Example of a harmonic progression in A-flat minor. The B-double flat for the Neapolitan sixth is a little annoying, but I tend to regard the Neapolitan sixth as a special chord to be used for special purposes. The French sixth close to the end doesn’t need double flat or double sharp anything. That’s another chord that shouldn’t be used too frequently without a good reason. On the other hand, the dominant seventh should be used quite freely, maybe even more than a plain dominant triad. And in A-flat minor, both the dominant triad and the dominant seventh need only one deviation from the key signature: G-natural instead of G-flat. Compare that to G-sharp minor: Example of a harmonic progression in G-sharp minor. Oops, I forgot to hide that half rest at the end. No double flats or double sharps for the Neapolitan sixth, but using the dominant seventh puts three instances of F-double sharp in a 5-measure example. And that explicitly notated C-sharp near the end almost makes me wish the natural and sharp combination (to cancel the C-double sharp for the French sixth) was more easily accessible in the Finale notation software. As it stands, that C-sharp could be misunderstood as C-triple sharp, which, though obviously wrong because of the discord with the D-sharp in the bass, nevertheless places a much greater cognitive load for sight reading than the explicit D-flat soon after D-natural in the A-flat minor example. Maybe to listeners there’s no difference between G-sharp minor and A-flat minor, at least for piano music, since the pianist presses the same keys which cause the same hammers to strike the same keys. But listening to an actual harp played by an actual harpist, listeners might notice that C-flat major sounds more resonant than B major, and similarly A-flat minor sounds more resonant than G-sharp minor. This is because each of the harp strings, D, C, B for the left foot and E, F, G, A for the right foot, is much more resonant in its flat position than its sharp position, and somewhat more resonant in the flat position than in the natural position. But of course harp pedals don’t have double sharp positions. Just to play G-sharp minor scales on the harp would require using the G-string for both F-double sharp (in the natural position) and G-sharp (in the single sharp position). Thus I’m not expecting anyone to write a harp piece in G-sharp minor, except maybe an amateur. For the piano, though, I might find something, I suppose it’s a trade-off between the seven flats of A-flat minor and the constant need to write F-double sharp for G-sharp minor. On the IMSLP page for G-sharp minor, I only see 153 compositions listed. For comparison, the C-sharp minor page shows 200 compositions and a link to 200 more, and that one has a link to a third page with 92 more. And for C minor there are more than 3,000 to choose from. Among those 153 pieces in G-sharp minor, I found this tango by Ernesto Nazareth. x YouTube Video I leaned on Cécile Chaminade for a lot of solo piano pieces with more than four flats in the key signature. And now I wanted to lean on her again, and though she did write at least two pieces in G-sharp minor — a nice Presto, Opus 2 that brightens to E major before returning to G-sharp minor; and a Minuet, Opus 5 — I could only find a MIDI rendering of the former and no videos of the latter on YouTube. Maybe someone reading this would like to do a recording? If you can play all of Chopin’s Opus 28 Preludes, you can probably pull off Chaminade’s Presto. Speaking of Chopin, he wrote music in G-sharp minor, and not just in the Opus 28 Preludes. For example, No. 6 of the Opus 25 Etudes... x YouTube Video ...or the stately Polonaise in G-sharp minor, first published posthumously. x YouTube Video I was very surprised to find Aaron Copland wrote a Passacaglia in G-sharp minor. Here’s Nathan Chim. x YouTube Video I liked his tempo choice better than Rodney Leinberger’s interpretation, but Nathan Chim doesn’t sound as secure towards the end. Of course both of them play it way better than I ever could. It turns out that one of the most overplayed compositions in the orchestral repertoire has a couple of examples of G-sharp minor music. Modest Mussorgsky was inspired by Viktor Hartmann’s drawings to write a solo piano piece called Pictures at an Exhibition, which was published in France with the title Les Tableaux d'une exposition — I bring that up for a reason that will become apparent later if you don’t already know it. Hartmann’s drawings are generally derided as mediocre, and salvaged from well-deserved obscurity by Mussorgsky’s music. Although I’m not too impressed by Hartmann’s drawings, I certainly don’t want others to parrot that opinion without seeing the pictures themselves. But that’s a topic for another day. Before the first musical picture, Mussorgsky writes a nice little Promenade theme in B-flat major. Then “Gnomus" in E-flat minor, the Promenade theme again but this time in A-flat major, and then… “The Old Castle” in G-sharp minor. It is a picture of stillness, and the music goes on for several measures without any accidentals, and still longer without F-double sharp. French composer Maurice Ravel is not the only one to have orchestrated the Tableaux, but he’s certainly the most famous. From what I can tell, Ravel retained all of Mussorgsky’s original key signatures, including G-sharp minor for “The Old Castle” and “Bydło.” This means five sharps for the non-transposing and octave transposing instruments. Ravel writes the alto saxophone in E-flat with four flats, and the English horns with six flats. For the clarinets it makes sense to use clarinets in A. Since the transposition is to remove three sharps, that means the key signature gets whittled down to two sharps. However, I read in an old orchestration books that bass clarinets in A are not widely available, thus putting an obstacle for community orchestras wanting to play this very popular suite. The bass clarinet part can certainly be played on B-flat bass clarinet, but the fingering is likely to be difficult for any player not quite at the level of a professional orchestra. The open thread question: what’s your favorite music in G-sharp minor? Bonus question: what other arrangements of Pictures at an Exhibition have you heard, and do you like any of them better than the Ravel orchestration? [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/3/2036989/-Music-open-thread-Music-in-G-sharp-minor?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/