If A minor were a person, who would she be?
Here's how the Signature Series works:
1. Select a musical key.
2. Gather the most famous melodies composed in that key.
3. Mash up.
4. Meet the person behind the key.
To get to know A minor, click on the orange play button.
Follow along with the pop-up comments to find out what composition is playing.
A minor: The Faded Beauty
Also known as:
The Wilted Rose.
The Cougar.
A minors you might know:
Miss Havisham from Great Expectations.
Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire.
Blanche Devereaux from The Golden Girls.
The notes: A - B - C - D - E - F - G♯ - A.
Number of sharps/flats: none.
Relative major: C major.
What they said about A minor in the 18th century:
"The worst key of all, so sleepy, phlegmatic, that it should be perhaps the least used." – J.J.H. Ribock, 1783
"Extremely lugubrious and gloomy. It is little practised; if so it expresses slaughters, massacres, and funeral dirges." – Francesco Galeazzi, 1796
More A minor listening:
Piano Sonata No. 8 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Cello Concerto by Robert Schumann.
The Canadian connection
"Dream Job" by the Dears.
Editor's note: Historical quotes and translations from A History of Key Characteristics in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries, by Rita Steblin, UMI Research Press (1983).
Related:
The Signature Series on CBC Music
Fifty Shades of Grey inspires craze for classical makeout music
European beauty secrets
Finding ways of growing old gracefully
Reinventing yourself at midlife
Listen to Avan Yu play Schumann's Piano Concerto in A Minor
posted by
Paolo Pietropaolo
on Aug 03, 2012