Musical symbols

[wizzarts]

When I was creating notes and chord-symbols for the SOS-board Richard was looking for something different than musical signs and symbols.

So I started reading some biographies of composers to figure out what they have used to create symbolic characters in their music...

Here are some of the things I have found:

minor is called the key of death (Tschaikowsky)

Orchestral Chimes are a symbol of eternity (Mahler)

A chromatic movement downwards is commonly interpreted as "suffer"


Do know also know about those symbolic signs in scores?

Might be very interesting

[Joseph]

Like any other suggestion deemed to come from an 'expert' (and one cannot argue the first two quotes come from experts) it may be given more subconscious weight that it deserves. Of course it always begins as one man's opinion. That aside, it is interesting to hear what anyone thinks about most anything but especially from the masters of one's chosen craft.

[ceg]

There is a fascinating book by Derryck Cooke called "The Language of Music" which extends such ideas as "a chromatic movement downwards is commonly interpreted as 'suffer'" into a more cohesive over-arching theory of tonal music. Well worth hunting out and reading!

[wizzarts]

Thanks a lot... book is ordered ...

[Deleted]

Mar 17, 2013 18:03:27 GMT ceg said:

There is a fascinating book by Derryck Cooke called "The Language of Music" which extends such ideas as "a chromatic movement downwards is commonly interpreted as 'suffer'" into a more cohesive over-arching theory of tonal music. Well worth hunting out and reading!

It is a wonderful book, I read it many years ago. It always struck home how similar ideas are expressed similarly in music, take Beethoven's 6th, and compare it with the theme music to "All Creatures Great and Small" (remember that?:-) or Peter's theme from Peter and the wolf, all with that major third, major sixth suggesting (for whatever reasons) verdure, youth, country life...
and the simple question: how is it that Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony does make you think of the countryside? It's just notes! Beethoven, so I've read (maybe in Cooke, it's been a while since I read it), originally intended to publish his Symphony No. 6 without any programme notes as a purely abstract piece of music. Would we still have "got it" if he had done that?

[wizzarts]

I have read an article some time ago about instruments and their usage in film-scores. Can't remember all of it but it was very informative about colors of instruments and instrumentation to support emotions.