THOMAS KELLY: Beethoven, like his contemporaries and those
that precede him-- Haydn, and Mozart, and Schubert--
tends to include in symphonies melodies, things
that might even sound sort of like songs, things that we call themes.
We call it a theme if it's a memorable melody.
We have themes in Monteverdi.
We have themes in Handel.
We have themes in all music, but there's a sense
in which one of the interesting things about this style
is that people tend to put contrasting themes, contrasting moods,
into the same piece of music.
If you have already thought about Handel's "Messiah,"
you'll probably remember that the songs in Handel's "Messiah"
are each about one thing.
They're about rage, "why do the nations so furiously rage,"
or about the pastoral calm of "he feed his flock like a shepherd,"
or they're about whatever it might be.
But it's a single emotion, a single state of the soul that you depict.
Well, in this kind of classical music of Mozart,
and Beethoven, and others, the ideas within a single piece of music,
one of the interesting things to do is to set one kind of mood and emotion
and passion against another one.
So that you create within a single piece a kind of contrast
that needs to get resolved before the piece gets over.
So one of the things we want to look for when listening to pieces of music
in this sort of classical style, as they call it,
are those places where it sounds like a melody is being played,
something that might be a song, something that might be a theme,
and other areas that don't sound like a theme is going on.
And the reason they don't sound like a theme's going on
is that a theme is not going on.
They're places that work as transitions from one theme to another.
And you hear the difference, I think, as the music goes along.
One of the things that composers also like to do,
in addition to contrasting themes, is to heighten that contrast
by using different keys.
Now, I think you may know what I mean by key, but maybe not.
Let me give you a quick demo.
You remember, I think, the beginning of the "Hallelujah" chorus.
What the singers sing is, [PLAYING "HALLELUJAH" CHORUS] They
sing, "Halleluljah!"
And then after a while, they sing, [PLAYING "HALLELUJAH" CHORUS] Remember
that?
Well, have you noticed that that's the same music?
[PLAYING "HALLELUJAH" CHORUS] Is the same as [PLAYING "HALLELUJAH" CHORUS]
Sort of.
It's sort of the same and sort of not the same.
The reason is, of course, that they're in two different keys.
This is music in one key, [PLAYING MUSIC]
This is the same music in another key. [PLAYING MUSIC]
So one of the cool things about that is that you
can have something that's the same and not the same at the same time.
Also, since pieces tend to like, or at least composers
tend to like to start [PLAYING MUSIC] They
like to start and end a piece in the same place.
You start here [PLAYING MUSIC] So if you had
a piece that went [PLAYING MUSIC] People in Beethoven's day would say,
that's nice, but that can't be the end.
It needs to get back to here. [PLAYING MUSIC] So a key really means,
[PLAYING SCALE] composing with those notes. [PLAYING CHORDS]
And a different key has different notes.
[PLAYING SCALE] [PLAYING CHORDS]
There's a lot of music theory involved in all that.
Don't worry about that.
You can't always tell what key you're listening to,
unless you're one of those fortunate people who has perfect pitch
and can say, oh yeah, that's C minor.
I can't do that.
But I can hear when a composer's is staying in the same key
and giving us music in that key, as opposed
to when a composer kind of is trying to get
us confused by wandering around and using different keys,
and you can't quite tell what key you're in.
Very often, when a composer does that, it's
deliberately designed to confuse you so that you can then arrive at a place
where you are in a key.
It's usually to get to another key that a composer does that,
and also to heighten the excitement, the tension level,
so that there can then be relaxation.
So with those ingredients, we might think
about developing a hypothetical symphony.
Let's just pretend for a minute that I'm Beethoven.
That's a bad idea.
But suppose I was going to write a piece of music.
A thing I might like to do is begin by thinking up a nice theme.
And I don't know, let's call it A. So I play you my very handsome theme.
And then I say, OK, now I want to play-- and I'm
going to play that theme in some key, we're going to call it key number one.
And then what I want to do is make a contrasting theme in a different key.
So I'm going to need some kind of music, transitional music, that will get me
from that first key, and that first sort of nice rounded song-like theme,
to my second theme, whatever it is.
There it is.
And that's going to be in another key, maybe
in the key that's built on the fifth degree of the scale,
or it could be anything I want to.
Having made that contrast and arrived at another place,
I'm going to say, OK, I want you to digest that.