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Because music is the language of emotions. In a musical language, emotions are expressed in exactly the same way as rational thoughts are expressed in, say, Russian or English. Music is designed to convey emotions. This is its main function.
To understand how this works, listen to Timothy Zahn's short story ” For the Love of Amanda.” It is better to listen to it, rather than read it, because in this case it is not only the text that is important,but also the music against which it is read.
According to Professor David Huron (David Huron), one of the leading researchers in the field of music cognition (music cognition), minor fret perceptually sounds sadder than major, for the following reason:�
According to him, lowering any step or steps of the” normal ” (habitual, probably most common in a particular culture) fret automatically leads to the perception of this fret by the listener as more “sad” or “sad”.
In the Western musical culture to which we belong, such a” normal ” fret is major (about 70% of all Western music is written in major). Therefore, for example, natural minor, with its lowered (relative to major) iii, vi andvii steps-sounds sad and sad.
Prof. Huron and his colleagues also conducted cross-cultural studies-they studied the perception of exotic musical modes and Indian ragas. And, tellingly, despite the striking differences in the structure of these frets and traditionally Western structures, this pattern was also found there.
In conclusion, I would like to note that Professor Huron refers this effect to the analogy with the human voice and the perception of its emotional component: slow, quiet, chaotic and lower-than-normal speech tone is automatically perceived by us as more sad and sad.
Not necessarily. There are many examples of happy songs written in a minor key and sad songs written in a major key. And in addition, there are many other frets that give different shades of moods. In life, too, there are not only these two moods, but also their shades and shifts. So it is in music.
Here you need to select two levels in the response. To begin with, let's look at how pure intervals (octave, fifth, and quarter) differ from all others. Even the ancient Greeks, studying the vibrations of two monochords (strings on a stick), noticed that only at certain string lengths does the sound become pleasant. When the string vibrations are excited, not only the fundamental frequency f is formed, but also side, multiples of f – harmonics. At the same time, if you add up the vibrations from two strings with fundamental frequencies f and g, then the total modulation harmonics f+g and f-g will appear. The same is true for the fundamental harmonics – they add up with other harmonics and with the fundamental tones. For which string lengths will the number of additional harmonics be the smallest? It can be shown that the string lengths must be related as rational fractions (in increasing order of the number of additional harmonics).) 3/2, 4/3, 5/4, 6/5, 8/9, 10/9 etc. The ancient Greeks also received the same fractions, calling them the natural system.�
So, we realized that the musical perception of sounds is mainly determined by the modulation pattern of harmonics. The question remains why a major triad sounds positive and a minor triad sounds sad, when the distribution of harmonics is similar. There is a hypothesis related to the psychoacoustic perception of the voice. Let's do this experiment: try to make a noisy sound at the output, and then pull the corners of the lips up, simulating a smile. The audible frequency of the noise will increase slightly, changing the harmonic pattern. A similar observation can be obtained by lowering the corners of the lips down. Perhaps major/minor keys are a learned reflex to some features of speech, which, in turn, are due to the features of the vocal apparatus.
However, modern music is full of examples when a “positive” song is written in a minor key, and no one really notices it. This is especially true for heavy music, where the harmonic pattern is very complex, and amplifier tuning and rhythm play a more important role than interval psychoacoustics.
The major-minor system was finally formed in European music by the beginning of the XVIII century. Then the church frets were divided into Modus major and Modus minor (cantus durus and cantus mollis). When defining our perception of major or minor, the following adjectives are used: major – clear, light,hard, minor – dark, soft. If we explain this topic to children at school, we simply say-major is fun, minor is sad. This is due to the intervals and chords on which the musical mode is based. So in a major, these are large intervals (third, sexta) and major triads based on them (tonic, subdominants), in a minor – on the contrary, small and minor ones. For our perception, small intervals and minor triads based on them always sound “darker”, “sadder”, etc. than large and major ones. HOWEVER! This is not an axiom, there are many major themes (P. I. Tchaikovsky, the finale of the first movement of the 6th Symphony in B Major, J. P. Blavatsky). Verdi, final blow from La Traviata in A flat major) which make you want to cry, as well as minor works, listening to which, on the contrary, inspires bright hope (the song “Smell of Spring” by the band “Butyrka” – D minor, Prelude variation and fugue in B minor by Cesar Franck, etc.). It all depends on the context, as they say.
The major-minor system was finally formed in European music by the beginning of the XVIII century. Then the church frets were divided into Modus major and Modus minor (cantus durus and cantus mollis). When defining our perception of major or minor, the following adjectives are used: major – clear, light,hard, minor – dark, soft. If we explain this topic to children at school, we simply say-major is fun, minor is sad. This is due to the intervals and chords on which the musical mode is based. So in a major, these are large intervals (third, sexta) and major triads based on them (tonic, subdominants), in a minor – on the contrary, small and minor ones. For our perception, small intervals and minor triads based on them always sound “darker”, “sadder”, etc. than large and major ones. HOWEVER! This is not an axiom, there are many major themes (P. I. Tchaikovsky, the finale of the first movement of the 6th Symphony in B Major, J. P. Blavatsky). Verdi, final blow from La Traviata in A flat major) from which you want to cry, as well as minor works, listening to which, on the contrary, inspires bright hope (the song “Smelled in the spring” by the group “Butyrka” – D minor). It all depends on the context, as they say.
in my opinion, this is related to the pace.
major melodies are often fast, and the fast tempo reflects the behavior of a person who is happy and cheerful, full of energy and is in motion, creating.
minor is often slow and reflects the decline of strength, fear, despair in which a person contemplates, overestimates, and, visually, is inactive.
Because shades of red are fun, and blue is sad 🙂
But seriously, one good explanation was found in the vast forums of musicians:
“The juxtaposition of major and minor in terms of emotional modality is conditional, although there are both acoustic and, to an even greater extent, physiological prerequisites for this juxtaposition (the reaction of the vocal cords), which were interpreted accordingly in the 18th century (the theory of affects*).
The conventional conventionality of such a juxtaposition is indicated by those examples where these modalities contradict the generally accepted ones. For example, Schumann's song ” Ich grolle nicht “(in Russian sung as” I'm not angry”) from the cycle” Dichtersliebe ” is written in C major. But it's definitely not fun music. The beginning of the overture to Rossini's The Barber of Seville is not sad music, although it is in a minor key””