OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 503 



but not in relative pitch, the change in the absolute pitch of the notes 

 constituting the chord of the same name is noticed, and the changed 

 effect attributed to some characteristic of the new key. And if, with 

 a harmony which we have been accustomed to hear performed with 

 all its notes at a tolerably definite standard pitch, the pitch of each 

 note is changed by the same interval, and by an amount as great, 

 for example, as a semitone, so that we realize the transposition, the 

 harmony will seem to have a different character, which we attribute 

 to its being in a different key. 



I question very greatly if the impression which any of the instru- 

 mental music of Handel, Bach, or Mozart produces upon us, when 

 played at the highest recent concert pitch, a markedly different effect 

 from that which was produced when the low pitch at which those 

 masters wrote was in vogue. Of course, merely noticing a change in 

 character, which we may attribute to change in key, when the pitch 

 is intentionally lowered a semitone, would prove nothing, as any ear 

 keen enough to notice the change would carry the recollection of the 

 high pitch at which it had usually been heard. 



In view of the fact that music of the most varied characteristics has 

 been written in the same keys, it is hard to understand how any such 

 inherent character as is popularly imagined can attach to them. It 

 seems much more likely that the great success of some eminent com- 

 poser in writing music of a particular kind in a certain key has tended 

 to stamp that character upon that key, in the minds of musicians ; 

 and later composers may even have been led to choose such a key 

 from its imagined superiority for their purposes. 



Rogers Laboratory of Physics, 

 February, 188(5. 



