No , thats not my logic. Bach, Beethoven, Mozat (and lets add a few more Brahms, Chopin, Clementi, Haydn, Tchaikovsky, etc.). I agree most people associate the great masters with classical music but they also associate them with concertos and piano sonatas and you are correct - probably most are in Major keys.
My point was that I (in my opinion) the general public at large would consider flamenco guitar to be "classical" (maybe this isn't so but thats my opinion !). Its apparent that you have a considerable music background and feel very strongly about certain concepts regarding jazz and classical music. If you feel that I'm mistaken (or wrong) in certain areas then I thank you for trying to point them out but its certainly not my intention to muddy any waters.
I've taken all your comments to heart and thank you for them. One thing that really troubles me however is your insistence that a key (for example the key of C Major) does not typically revolve around C and G melody notes and C and G major sounding chords - this occurs the majority of the time and its a very important concept in music. In any key the root and the dominant sounding chords are the most important . . . . no ?! (thats not to say other chords aren't important , I said these would be the "most important").
You've no doubt ascertained I'm not a great jazz guitarist or classical guitarist but I do play quite a bit (some jazz and classical - but probably nowhere near as much as you) however I improvise over some complex chord structures and consider myself fairly knowledgeable. I do appreciate your comments.
Key and tonality are pretty fluid things. Our understanding of them changes depending on context, tuning, and our place in history. As a result, we need to be really precise about the terms we use.
So let me explain what Kingpatzer and I mean with our comments, but I'll split it into two parts: melodic and harmonic (as concepts, not scales! :) )
Melodically, a piece in the key of C will "revolve around" C. That's the accepted definition of 'tonic' - it's the tonal center. But that doesn't mean it's the note most often used, as I showed with "Happy Birthday". In fact, it seems the stronger or more memorable the melody, the LESS likely it is to be the most frequent note.
Music is interesting because it has tension and release. Too much tension and the music is jarring; too much release and it's boring. Since the tonic is the point of greatest melodic release, it will often be the LAST note of a composition - but it's rarely the most common one. You'll often find the tonic is used frequently early on in a piece - but after that it's used sparingly. The composer is saying "here's home base..." and then leading you on a journey through the surrounding countryside. Eventually he (or she) brings you back home.
I'll illustrate this with another simple melody: The Farmer in the Dell. If you're in the key of G, you'll find 7 G notes (out of 24 notes in the melody). That's a close second to the most frequent note, which is B (appearing 8 times), but here's the thing - if you're in 2/4 it's a 16 bar melody. Five of the G notes appear in the first TWO measures! It's the central note, but it's completely non-existent in 75% of the measures of the song.
Now to harmony. In the key of C, a G7-C (the V-I authentic cadence) is the strongest tension/release statement you can make. But a good composer doesn't beat you into submission with it. They use it, and the other cadences, as musical punctuation marks - and what makes a great period at the end of a sentence won't serve well as a comma or a semicolon. A simple song like "Farmer in the Dell" can be harmonized using just the V7 and I, but a complex piece like Liebestraum #3 by Liszt will use it sparingly. In fact, in the Liszt piece most of the chords are dominant types (7ths, diminished, etc), but only about 1/4 of them resolve to the tonic chord.
In general, harmony is more limited than melody. Since chords are several notes sounded at the same time, rapid cascades of chords sound muddy, while the same thing done in single notes can seem effervescent. So chords tend to last much longer than single notes. Because chords last so long, we hear all the notes against that landscape of chords - that's why I said a couple posts back that if you're playing A Aeolian against a C chord, the chord will probably win.
Because we hear chords as the foundation of a composition, and melody is experienced against those chords, our perception is that the tonic is the 'strongest' note. We perceive the other chord tones to be pretty good, non-chord scale tones are ok, and non-scale tones are weak. But the reality is that composers make much more extensive use of the things we find 'weak' when we hear them in isolation. They can get away with this (and in fact, strive for it) because their compositions aren't heard in small isolated bits. The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
In a laboratory, your view of tonality works (in fact, it's been proven by Carol Krumhansel and Ed Kessler in experiments in the early 80s). But that's in the laboratory... in the musical landscape that composers work in, things are a lot more interesting :)
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No , thats not my logic. Bach, Beethoven, Mozat (and lets add a few more Brahms, Chopin, Clementi, Haydn, Tchaikovsky, etc.). I agree most people associate the great masters with classical music but they also associate them with concertos and piano sonatas and you are correct - probably most are in Major keys.
Um, a piano sonata is a stereotypical classical composition, as it was really in the classical period when the harpsichord gave way to the piano.
My point was that I (in my opinion) the general public at large would consider flamenco guitar to be "classical" (maybe this isn't so but thats my opinion !).
That might be the case, but flamenco is no more classical music than a New Orleans Brass Band. The classical period starts roughly in 1750 and continues for about 75 years to 1825 or so. Folks will quibble on the dates, but they don't change much. While there are reference to flamenco back to the late 1700's, it does not arise as a recognized and separate art form until the 1800s. Prior to then we really have very little knowledge of what flamenco consisted of. The last time I really looked into the history, the prevailing theory was that it was largely unaccompanied singers and rhythmic dance, with the guitar coming later.
Flamenco as an art form, in other words, comes to being after the classical period.
Moreover, it comes to being as an accompaniment style to dance and sung plays. Which in no way detracts from the beauty of the music, but it was developed not as composed pieces but in much the same way Jazz was created - as an interactive art form rather than as composition.
If you mean classical music in a more generic sense, then you are talking about music that arose organically out of the traditions of the common practice period, which is contrasted by earlier work precisely in that the music was not modal and followed established and specific harmonic practices. Neither of which applies to flamenco.
That's not a bash against flamenco - it is an incredibly influential and important part of our musical heritage, but it's ancestry doesn't point back to classical music.
So, regardless of what the public may or may not think, there is no way in which a musicologist would talk about classical music that would include flamenco. They would talk about flamenco as a culmination of a variety of musical traditions and influences in Andelusia, and how those traditions and influences gave rise to it's own unique art form.
This is the music theory forum. The point of this forum is to talk about how music theory is applied and understood. Asking questions will get answers, but making unclear, misleading or false statements might get you some flak. Take it as an outlet of passions, not as a personal thing :)
Its apparent that you have a considerable music background and feel very strongly about certain concepts regarding jazz and classical music. If you feel that I'm mistaken (or wrong) in certain areas then I thank you for trying to point them out but its certainly not my intention to muddy any waters.
Cool! Take note of where people are showing you to be mistaken. It's not a personal attack, but if you make a statement in here that is not supported by at least some school of music theory, someone will point out that what you're saying is likely wrong. And that happens to all of us. There's plenty of room for honest disagreement on various points, but when talking about well established points (such as how modes work with harmonies) then there really are correct and incorrect views. Or at least accepted and not-accepted views. This stuff changes over time and maybe yours is the future vision. But right now it's not something you'd hear taught in any music program.
I've taken all your comments to heart and thank you for them. One thing that really troubles me however is your insistence that a key (for example the key of C Major) does not typically revolve around C and G melody notes and C and G major sounding chords - this occurs the majority of the time and its a very important concept in music. In any key the root and the dominant sounding chords are the most important . . . . no ?! (thats not to say other chords aren't important , I said these would be the "most important").
Most important is not most frequent. (Oh, and thanks for recognizing that the 6th isn't in that group!!).
You've no doubt ascertained I'm not a great jazz guitarist or classical guitarist but I do play quite a bit (some jazz and classical - but probably nowhere near as much as you) however I improvise over some complex chord structures and consider myself fairly knowledgeable. I do appreciate your comments.
Knowledge of theory isn't about playing skill. There are folks who know far less theory than I do who just put me to shame on their instrument. And there are folks who are far worse players than I who know much more theory. Theory is about describing what is played. It's not what is played.
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." -- HST
Just thought I'd add a little about classical guitar and Flamenco.
It's true that the general public are unclear about the difference between Spanish classical guitar and Flamenco guitar music, and going back a hundred years and more that was also the general impression among classical musicians, composers and music critics too. To them the guitar was a folk instrument, fit only for folk music such as Flamenco. That's why there's virtually no guitar music written by the great masters mentioned above. Beethoven was quite complimentary about the guitar but not enough to actually write anything for it. Fortunately Bach wrote a lot of lute music which transcribes well for guitar.
Spanish classical guitar composers and performers, such as Sor, Aguado, etc , in the face of such prejudice, had a constant uphill struggle to be taken seriously when presenting their music in the various European capitals of music such as Vienna. So it was often in their interests to play down their Spanish roots and go easy on those Phrygian runs and chord progressions associated with gipsy and (later) Flamenco guitarists.
Even later composers, such as Tarrega, whose music often includes those Spanish sounding licks and chords courtesy of the Phrygian mode, by no means did it all the time. I don't recall ever seeing any Tarrega composition written in the Phrygian mode throughout. I suspect that's because there aren't any.
