How significant is the tonality of a work of music to our perception of it as performers or listeners? Could a work in D minor have been written in B-flat minor, or is there a sort of nomenclature to keys? The treatises on key characteristics attest to the latter rather than the former, and when […]

“I don’t want to be overheard, and there are lots of people here who know me, but it is dull,” says Rameau’s nephew of his uncle’s music in Diderot’s eponymous book. He continues: “It’s not that I care twopence about dear uncle, if ‘dear’ he be. He is made of stone. He would see my […]