Timtin wrote:Here's an idea. Instead of us being given yet another edition of Bach's 48, which includes some relatively easy preludes and fugues in almost impossible keys, may I suggest that some bright spark publishes the complete set transcribed into just 2 easy keys, such as C major and A minor?
Well, that would make the music incredibly dull to have everything in just a few keys. Also, you change the feel and sonority of a piece if you transpose it to another key, and I am really never in favour of transposing music to a key other than what the composer wrote it in.
Not a good idea, I don't think. Music in remote keys is not really inherently difficult to play, as can be seen as a generality if you do the mind experiment of taking an easy-to-play piece in an easy key and transposing it to one of those "difficult" keys. Although the pattern of black and white keys is going to change (with keyboard music), it is not likely in most cases to make the piece hugely more difficult to play from a physical point of view: indeed, if it does change the difficulty somewhat, it it just as likely to make it physically easier as to make it more difficult. In fact, some people have said that keyboard music using more black keys tends to be easier to play than music using mainly white keys. I have heard that Chopin taught beginning piano students the scale of B major first, not C major as would usually be done - presumably for this reason.
The only difficulty with remote keys comes with trying to read and process those keys, and I would argue that this is mainly due to the fact that one encounters those keys relatively seldom, so many performers are not used to reading music in them. I think the remedy for that is for musicians to practise playing in those keys more, rather than to transpose music written in them to "easier" keys. I would even recommend relatively inexperienced or new performers to play in those keys, and not put everything into the half-dozen or so "easy" keys for them. The ability to read music in all 30 key signatures is, in my opinion, one of the tools of the trade that all musicians ought to have - all key signatures should be firmly fixed in the mind and all should be equally easy to read, if one gets sufficient practice in reading the less-common keys.
I am a pianist, so I am speaking from that perspective; and I have read that remote keys are more likely to be found in piano music than any other kind. And maybe some keys are genuinely and significantly harder to play in for certain instruments, and the possible techniques far more limited. So I don't know if this view would be fully applicable to all instruments; but I think the principle of it is valid, at least.
I think different keys have their own feel or atmosphere in some sense, and I would find it rather dull if almost all music were written in keys with no more than (for example) two, or three, sharps or flats. I believe it needlessly limits variety and diversity if certain remote keys are arbitrarily ruled out of consideration most of the time.
Regards, Michael.