I just found you today (October 2020). Quarantine has changed me in many ways (see: my screen name). I'm a music omnivore who is just getting in to classical and found your "First Thoughts on how to Listen" video by searching "Introduction to Mozart". - New fan in LA
I'd like to hear a comparably coherent explanation of serial composition theory and techniques, eventually. I'm one of those people who has listened to Schoenberg for pleasure.
I’ve been playing classical piano since age 7, so you could say I’m a “native speaker” of music reading. But listening to this video, I realized I would have had no clue how to explain these concepts to a non musician. Excellent presentation.
Well... it doesn't behave universally across cultures in ways that are consistent. There is certainly some science within these theoretical things but not in the same a modern scientific theory has to be composed of.
Definitely do! I hope I can make more videos this Christmas! Just been super busy at Yale. So glad you enjoyed - that's why I made them, so people can discover the power of art music :)
You used one of my favorite passages in all of music to illustrate the distant key relationships - the Schubert B flat somata, and that pendulum swing he does between Bb major and d minor, with the rumbling in the bass. So smooth, so subtle, and astonishing. Schubert always surprises me with his modulations, I find myself asking "how did we get here?" because he does it so effortlessly and quietly. He seems to avoid the usual route through the circle of 5ths, or obvious emphasis on the leading tone, I think he slips into his new keys in the voice leading and that's how it passes unnoticed while he's doing it. His ability to shift harmonic centers amazes me every time because I never seem to hear it as he's doing it; it's hard to catch him in the act. Would you consider an analysis of "Erlkonig" or perhaps some highlights from "Schone Mullerin?"
Why does this amazing channel have only 2 thousands of subscribers? I firstly thought because of the level of content that it has 1,8 millons. Thank you for your videos!
"Why does this amazing channel have only 2 thousands of subscribers?" Because everyone is busy listening to the really _culturally important_ "musicians" like Lil' Wayne, Kanye, and Beyonce.
@TurbanGuy4k "do you hate rap?" Yes. It's devolved into nothing but a bunch of low-IQ cretins, virtually none of which can (a) play an instrument or (b) sing, speaking over the top of someone _else's_ pre-processed beats.
I highly recommend the book Beethoven: His Spiritual Development by J.w.n. Sullivan. I really felt like I understood Beethoven and his music. It's a really good book.
2:34 that's harmonic minor, not a natural minor scale. Aside from that, great video. As someone who grew up on classical music, I hope more people learn to understand and appreciate it. I think I can learn a lot from your channel too, because as a child I never really paid attention to structure or tonality because, well, it was music I liked and it didn't really go beyond that. Thank you for educating me and many others about classical music ^^
Nope sorry but this completely lost me. The first two videos I really liked. But here it was so fast that I just couldn’t keep up. One of the problems was not being able to ‘hear’ in the music what you ‘saying’ in the words. I think I would need to hear many more examples to understand this. It all became too confusing. Sorry. I feel as though I’ve lost the course now - which is a great disappointment to me but I guess we all have limits - or maybe I’m just too old?
You're never too old to learn music theory. However, your "problem" (this is not really a problem) is that you don't understand this particular way of presenting theory. Western music theory has so many components and so many nuances that it can be explained a million different ways. Every music educator I have ever met has said this exact same information, but in vastly different ways. It's not that you're slow or too old, it's just that this particular approach is not suited to the logic you specifically need and use. For example, if I were to ask my current director to explain to me a musical concept, his mind would immediately jump to the "trombonist" way of answering it. My previous director would want to present things the "saxophonist" way. The concept and definitions will always be precisely the same, but the way it is shown to you will be different almost every single time. The video fails to factor in (mostly because it can't do that) the fact that viewers may not understand the difference in a tone and a semitone, or what "adding a seventh" could mean, or any other number of things. Teaching music is an art in and of itself. You have to know who you're talking with, and know them well. Know their background, their instruments, the music they listen to, their age, their prior knowledge, even their personality. All of these things factor into what method of teaching music is most effective. The video can't do that for thousands of people, so it gives the most concise and textbook answers it can in the hopes of at least giving viewers SOMETHING to think about or ask questions about. The reason I have typed up such a monster in response to your comment is because I care about music education so deeply. I want to make sure that every person who tries to understand something first knows that they are not a failure, or stupid, or hopeless. If you want to learn, you're already smart. If there is ever anything musical you have a question about, please feel free to contact me via a reply or a message. No question is a stupid question, and I'm proud of you for trying to grasp a concept as advanced as tonality. Have a great night!
@@avenp.5739 I've been teaching music theory at the college level for a couple of decades. I can vouch for and echo what you're saying. Every single class is different, and even the those with only a few students had to have the material explained and shown in many ways, and I've constantly had to arrange and rearrange my presentations, and get very creative, in order to put the points across. As a teacher, it's humbling. As a student, it's difficult and frustrating. In that whole time only a couple of students - literally two - have gone through even one semester (out of four) with straight As. Inside the Score presents it as well or better than anyone I've heard. It's the straight goods, but nobody at all, ever, can present a subject like this one in a 15 min. video. He did a noble job of it.
Thank you for giving the significance of historical tunings a mention! This is so important to tonality and not a mere footnote in musical history / aesthetics.
Interesting that you guys have different names on the second, third, and sixth step. In Swedish we call it Tonika, Subdominant paralell (because we se it as a paralell to the fourth step in the scale), Dominant paralell, Subdominant, Dominant, Tonika paralell... and the seventh is an incomplete Dominant sebtim.
A particular pet peeve of mine is the current state of music completely neglecting the expressive possibilities of harmony. It wasn't always like that. Many heavy metal bands,for example,are brimming with melodic virtuosity,but the harmony is somewhere between flabby and impoverished. This trend has only been around in the past 10 - 15 years,and I can't explain it. Concerning art music,the tricky matter with tonality is that it applies wonderfully for the common practice era,but sonata form is pretty passe' at this point for us composers to consider key as a structural consideration,perhaps only in conjunction with changes of texture, which has become much more important to structure. That said, studying form and structure of the common practice era can be very fruitful and very intellectually rewarding. As far as post-cpmmon practice,one book I can't praise enough, especially if you're a Claude freak like me,is "Debussy and the Veil of Tonality" by Mark DeVoto. It's an illuminating book when it comes to form not relying on the usual methods of using keys and themes for structure.
Love that I’m using this to study for a final exam where I have to be able to tell or at least guess fairly accurately which key he has modulated to… And the final comment is to not worry about it bc most people can’t hear it… OMG this class is killing me.
Can you please make videos dedicated to explaining tonality explored by each composer individually, and make them into a playlist? I am not a musician myself, however I am passionate about classical music and would love to venture into the details of how tonality works. This video is the clearest quick explanation I have ever listened to and I am afraid you've left me only wanting more!
Feel free to inbox me if you have any questions about a particular composer or style. These videos take the guys who make them a long time, so there's no guarantee you'll get answers you want quickly and completely. They're doing an awesome job, and this kind of quality takes a lot of time and effort.
The basics of tonality have been consistent since Bach's time, so all composers since have basically been working with the same tool set. However some composers are more constrained - meaning they tend to remain within a few comfortable keys, and other composers are more adventurous - meaning they like exploring distant keys more. Most classical music has fairly conservative use of tonality, until the late romantic period, where it become more adventurous. However, the amount of chords used has nothing to do with how good a piece is. Brilliant music can be written in just three chords or so. When chords don't change often, it creates more emotional impact for when they finally do change.
From what I've learned Beethoven pushed the level of musical theory so far that later composers were afraid of being compared to him, which led to some trends: - the symphonical form was given up for some decades to come - composers rather focussed on pushing the musicians to their limits than the music itself (so it was less about mathematics & more about skills)... - ...or on "making imaginative music inspired by a picture or scenery", which basically was what all of romantic music was about (so the audience got to be pleased rather than surprised) Then it was Wagner who came up with the next step in the evolution of western music: the "unresolved" tristan chord. Kind of a blasphemy :) Anyway, he didn't take it to the extreme, he just introduced it. Anton Bruckner soaked that up (since he was both a Wagnerian and an overly passionate musical theorist) and was the one to push the music as a whole, all the while not becoming too popular (since his scores didn't feature clear & obvious themes [he drifted beyond a bit too far before coming back again for the dominating zeitgeist]). So it was finally Gustav Mahler who made it popular and really set the stage for orchestral cinematic music as we all know it [with the latest most famous piece possibly being the Pirates of the Carribean theme]. Long story short: It was Haydn, Mozart & Beethoven who pushed music itself during the Viennese Classic. Wagner, Bruckner & Mahler pushed it in the Romantic era.
I still hear characters to keys, even in equal temperament. Like for example F minor to me feels like the key of death, unreleivably sad, and A major sounds not just happy, but bouncy, especially when it is staccato.
@@saracen8441 Yeah, I think the instruments do have a relation to the key characters in equal temperament. A flute, a violin, and a piano are going to have totally different characters as solo instruments, even if the melody played by each of them is identical in tempo, key, dynamics, accent, etc. Maybe it is something about the percussive timbre of the piano that makes me feel the deathly lamentation of F minor, the dreamy nocturnal vibe of B major, and the desperation of Bb minor. Then again, there are pieces that don't have the emotions that I typically associate with a certain key, like I have heard happy and joyous pieces in C minor and melancholic pieces in A major. When that happens, I usually find that the melodic motion, tempo, octave, instrumentation, and harmonic emphasis explain the character of the piece when the key alone doesn't(more downward half steps or motions from scale degree 2 to scale degree 1 = more melancholy, even in a major key for instance).
I don't think of E minor as being a direct relation to C major but rather a two step relation. Here are the direct relations to my ears: C major -> C minor - Parallel key C major -> D minor - Modal change C major -> F major - Subdominant C major -> G major - Dominant C major -> A minor - Relative key Bb major -> C minor - Works as dominant even if technically not dominant function By the way, I like your videos.
This was the hardest one for me to grasp and hold on to so far, being a total nubie to music theory. Perhaps some more listening examples with the sheet music may have helped me??? I don't know, I'll keep watching. Thank you so much for this series. I am learning a lot.
THIS IS THE BEST FUCKIN' EVER INTRODUCING VIDEO OF THIS SUBJECT I'VE SEEN. Thank you, dude. I'll watch your uploads and immediately apply it. Many thanks. That's very exciting. You explanation is art too. GOOD JOB
This is just WONDERFUL, I studied without any but any, zero knowledge of tonal music at college; MUSIC. It was entertaining but yet hard and nevertheless the motivation of studying what I always liked and wanted to study kept me going 'til HARMONY IV, until, well, German chords and Italian chords blabla started, then for the sake of my dignity Lol I dropped the class. However many doubts stayed within my "developing ideas" at the time to compose my own music. I had two private tutors and they never had the patience to listen my questions, always cutting me off and going different direction going over what I understood but what I asked. Painly. Today listening to this wonderfull explanation after many years I've FINALLY understand the Modulation on key relation. How easy and simple is that, plus the bonus of how composers composed? Wow!! U are wonderful, I'm subscribed and ur first student in the row. I only hope u really reply any Q's I may have. Awesome great informative well clear explained Tonal Music. Thanks so much 😍🙏🏻🎼
Wow brother thank you for this wonderful work,I'm a first year music student and your explanations are easy to follow and not to complicated! May the Lord bless you for all your hard work!
2:37 Part of the reason could have also been because of his presumed perfect pitch and therefore his immediate association of each key to something else because he could distinguish them
That brief explanation of key characters, and how Beethoven's keyboard was tuned differently than modern pianos, really explained something I've never understood! Other than being higher or lower, I've never understood how one key has a different character or color than any other (besides the obvious difference in major and minor). But if a piano was tuned to a specific key, then other keys would definitely have slight variations, some more so than others, which explains why some were more pleasing and others more menacing. I've often wondered if I'm just not hearing it, but perhaps this distinction has been lost in our modern tuning. Am I understanding that right?
Yes - the distinction has been lost in modern tuning. Because for example, F sharp minor or major would sound pretty "crap" on a historic instrument, while C, G, D, A etc would have their own characteristic qualities. Whereas now every pitch is spaced totally equally ("Eqaul Temperament"), so every key sounds identical (on a piano at least).
I agree, but also disagree with the point about tuning pianos. Much of Beethoven's music was written for orchestra, where the tuning is irrelevant. And the Eroica is a symphony, where we don't need to think about equal temperament etc.
That passage from the Schubert Bb Sonata beginning around 11:00 gets me every time I hear it. I don't really know why it touches me a certain way, but that pendulum swing between d minor and Bb, and the rumbling in the bass... That's playing around with the harmony and the key relationships, pivoting so beautifully around the single note D. If you ever revisit this topic, a great piece to exemplify the use of key relationships is Schubert's "Erlkönig." It's easy to hear the key changes, and coupled with the story being told from three different perspectives - the boy, the father, the elf king - you have all the ingredients to highlight how key relationships can paint the picture and tell a story.
Same here. Whenever I listen to it I remember about my "not-so-good" childhood.... Listen to Beethoven's arietta of 32nd piano sonata its same as emotional as Schubert's one and it always makes me cry. The scherzo of Schubert's B-Falt is also one of my favorites
@@emil797 No problem, I survived yet another year, it seems. 😂 It’s the Piano Sonata No. 1 in F minor. The exact excerpt is from its fourth movement. You can hear it at around 13:04 in this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Ikrm2FOuRWg.htmlsi=nScSMUDMR2cppd-9
Interesting, but you're confusing chord changes with key changes. At 8:15 for example, you're playing the different chords in the key of C, but you're describing those chord changes as key signature changes when they're chord changes in the same key of C. You're showing chord progressions, not key signature changes. A key change would be going from C key signature to F key signature, with having only one flat note which is Bb in the scale of F major.
I love classical music as well as modern but I don’t understand music theory. I’ve always found it intriguing and I thank you so much for this video. I am looking forward to the others. I am not bored by music theory
Your channel is a godsend. Amazing. One point (you may have done this since posting these). Could you switch to neutral pronouns? Not all composers are men - it’s distracting every time you do it. You wouldn’t call them Steve for no reason, so why he? Feel free to not disagree fellow commenters - language matters, if it didn’t, you wouldn’t care.
I'm not sure I believe that there's nothing intrinsic or physiological about tonality. If it took a long time for the system to fully develop, they could be that we were reaching blindly for something that we didn't understand until we found it
I already knew much of what you covered; from that perspective, I found your explanation extremely coherent and useful, and did learn a few points. Thank you for the engaging tutorial.
Hi. Love your videos. Could you go more in depth in this one when you get a chance? Or mention more about keys and the specifics of modulation in your podcasts. I still can't pick out many modulations and I feel like I'm missing part of the experience
In the discussion of the diatonic triads, I don't understand why you move in the opposite direction for minor keys as opposed to major. What significance does this sequence have?
I really need to know more about this but I really don't know where to start and depression is not helping at all... I get confused and distracted very easily.
I get some of the basic ideas, but a lot of the more theoretic explanations don't really make sense to me, as if I'd missed a lesson. The whole video seems rushed.
2:34 - Wait, wait! Are you saying that the music of Beethoven and other early composers do no longer sounds the way they intended because their pianos were tuned differently? Are we... Are we just going to leave that there? Has anyone tried looking into this?
that is correct. they tuned their instruments differently because now, it is standard that orchestras tune their A to 440hz compared to the frequency they used back then. however, i'd argue this does not pull away anything from the performance or the experience. check adam neely's channel regarding 432 hz tuning and he explains it well. EDIT: I also recommend his d minor is the saddest key video
@@pogeman2345 it's not about A frequency here, it's about a system of tuning the instrument. Now we are using equal temperament (in which the frequency interval between every pair of adjacent notes has the same ratio). But in the past they were using other tuning systems, and different keys had different characters, because for example a fifth (or any other) interval between C and G wasn't the same ratio as in for example D and A. It's about system of tuning, not frequency of A.
I think these are great videos, but I wish they wouldn't move so fast through the points. More examples, more carefully explored would make them even stronger. Showing carefully the impact of a modulation with a mediant relationship, for example, with some Schubert examples or the power of the flattened supertonic in Brahms wouldn't necessarily be beyond the average listener here. Yes, there would be more complex technical terms, but the examples would carry that, I'm sure.
great information and passion is coming thru your videos but now adays ...all...ALL most all western videos sound as if the person is speaking without taking a breathe... you know its destressing to hear a voice thats one long monolaouge ...so to speak... and here you are talking about music ...I wish to expreince that grace in the narration also... Thats living in the NEW consciousness...become one.... my friend.. slow down...relish...enjoy your own voice... will carry accross your passion and information for music much better...in spirit...first. TQ
I now know I know nothing about music...I was aware that JSBach was the master of fugues, but that's it. I love music but it might as well be from Mars for all the grasp I have of how it's composed and the rules and structure of it... 🤷🤷
A question. What was the Bach piece playing while discussing JS moving out of the close keys? It was choral, i know that. But what piece? Mass in B minor?
