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Thoughtful comment indeed. I'm always impressed when causality is invoked early in the explanation. TY for posting.

Major and Minor - the Strebetendenz-Theory

If you want to answer the question, why major sounds happy and minor sounds sad, there is the problem, that some minor chords don't sound sad. The solution of this problem is the Strebetendenz-Theory. It says, that music is not able to transmit emotions directly. Music can just convey processes of will, but the music listener fills this processes of will with emotions. Similary, when you watch a dramatic film in television, the film cannot transmit emotions directly, but processes of will. The spectator perceives the processes of will dyed with emotions - identifying with the protagonist. When you listen music you identify too, but with an anonymous will now.

If you perceive a major chord, you normally identify with the will "Yes, I want to...". If you perceive a minor chord, you identify normally with the will "I don't want anymore...". If you play the minor chord softly, you connect the will "I don't want anymore..." with a feeling of sadness. If you play the minor chord loudly, you connect the same will with a feeling of rage. You distinguish in the same way as you would distinguish, if someone would say the words "I don't want anymore..." the first time softly and the second time loudly.

This operations of will in the music were unknown until the Strebetendenz-Theory discovered them. And therefore many previous researches in psycholgy of music failed. If you want more information about music and emotions and get the answer, why music touches us emotionally, you can download the essay "Vibrating Molecules and the Secret of their Feelings" for free. You can get it on the link:
http://www.willimekmusic.homepage.t-online.de/homepage/Striving/Striving.doc

Enjoy reading

Bernd Willimek

Well, you won`t find a more depressive (or expressive) song than Schubert`s Impromtu in fsharp major. Why this is, I don`t know. A testimony to his genius - and sadness in is latter days maybe . . .

Gb major: please!!

Yes, that is a sad major-key piece, and there are many others. (I'm of the opinion that almost *every* major-key piece, especially if it's slow, is sad.)

-J

What is not sad, then?

Dvorak's Slavonic Dance #7 is super joyful and energetic.

And of course, it's written in C minor.

I was referring to beet's claim that almost all pieces in major keys are sad.

Of course. One can also view major key as usually sad and minor key as usually happy and energetic.

After all, in a major triad, let's say C, you have a major third C-E, but also a minor third E-G. And the opposite/reverse in a minor triad.

Maybe I just think everything's sad, then. Or, at least, heavily nostalgia-induced.

Proust said something about music being inherently sad, because it's duration-based, i.e. a given piece exists for a finite amount of time, and so, encoded in its very essence is a sense of its ending, of its mortality, of all of our mortality. Maybe that's too much, but I like the sentiment. Music is a transitory thing compared to a painting or a sculpture.

It takes a certain energy to get out of that sad/nostalgic aura for me. Bach's C# major prelude (Book I) sounds genuinely happy. So does the D major prelude. But Eb major? E major? No: anything sufficiently slow sounds sad to me.


-J

How about the middle movement of Beethoven's Op 14 No 1?

I'm not quite sure what to make of that movement (even though I've played it). It has a certain dignity, a certain reservation. I certainly wouldn't call it "happy". Maybe vaguely sad, or lonely. Anyway, it's in a minor key.

The opening themes of the first and last movements of 14/1 demonstrate my "energy required for non-sadness" theory. The last movement's main theme sounds somewhat happy; the first movement's main theme not even close (to my ears).

-J

Check this out: "Happy" Billy Jean (Michael Jackson).

It would actually make a really uplifting piece.

How do we 'hear' happiness and sadness in music? There's research suggesting that it's built into us; they let people in indigenous environments listen to Canadian/American pop music and they were able to hear the feelings in the songs based on the melody. (Also the major/minor key system is NOT built into their cultures... they may use pentatonics, rhythms, etc..)

Our perception of happy/sad runs deeper than culture.

I'd still be interested to see the methodology of such research. For example, for a start, how do you find people who haven't already been exposed to western music? How can you tell it's the major/minor component that they recognise as happy/sad and not things like tempo, instrumentation, vocal quality and rhythm? I'm not sure I could tell the feelings in many pop songs if I couldn't hear the words. And sometimes not even then...

I'm with you...this all sounds a little too pat.

So I did a little googling and turned up what appears to be a major and fairly recent (2010) reference for all kinds of studies involving music and emotion - Handbook of Music and Emotion: Theory, Research, Applications . It looks very interesting, but also vast and intimidating. It may be one to get from the library...

They found indigenous peoples in Africa, Tibet, etc. where the music in their cultures don't consist of major/minor tonality.
I believe everything works together; check out the 'major keyed' version Billy Jean and Bad Romance on Youtube... it sounds completely different, and I'd even say Billy Jean sounds upbeat and optimistic. It's just a key change, but it sounds totally different (they used the original tracks and modified the tones). (link in my last post)

@wouter79, despite the lovely music you reference being rhythmic and uptempo, there is still a twinge of sadness in it to my ear. I have a difficult time >not< hearing these songs, whose words I do not understand, as having some element of pain, loss, deep history, or tragedy. I suspect, even if I knew the words and discovered them to my surprise to be about "happy" things, that that happiness would be tinted with an ironic, perhaps sinister, perhaps tragic, perhaps lonely, undertone. Indeed this is one of the strangely evocative things about a lot of folk music. The minor key places a "happy" thing in the context of an overall tragic life or indifferent god or universe.



So I'm not sure they are good examples of "happy sounding" minor key music. Am I alone in this?

In addition to my last post, I am announcing that the English translation of our work "Musik und Emotionen - Studien zur Strebetendenz-Theorie" is now published:
Music and Emotions - Research on the Theory of Musical Equilibration
You can get it free at the link:
http://www.willimekmusic.de/music-and-emotions.pdf
Bernd Willimek