a weird quote from a very famous TV documentary

[possopo]

I'm currently watching a documentary Howard Goodall made about Cole Porter (from his series 20th Century's Greats).

 

he says that Cole Porter uses a lot of semi-tones in his melodies (he used "All Through The Night" as an example). that makes these melodies sound exotic and mysterious because these semi-tones are very muched used in oriental music. but then, he talks about minor and major keys. first, he says that most composers of popular music in Porter's times were using major keys most of the time (for various reasons like popular music is supposed to be cheerful...) but Cole Porter started to use minor keys a lot. and that's where I'm lost.

Howard Goodall says "minor keys have more semi-tones in them than major keys... that's as simple as that". the presence of a greater number of semi-tones makes minor keys feel less confident and cheerful, more insecure and suggestive.

 

my first question is very simple : how do minor keys have more semi-tones than major keys ? I must be missing something but when thinking about scales, major scales and natural minor scales of course have the same amount of everything since they're parallel.

 

my second question is probably a bit trickier :

I heard (from the very same Howard Goodall) oriental music relied a lot on the pentatonic scale because the notes from this scale were sounding closer one from one another than other notes (for acoustic reasons) and that made this scale sound more earthly, natural...

and now, he says oriental music uses semi-tones a lot.

so how do I connect these two assertions ? :/

[1001gear]

Sounds like he's talking melodically in both cases, also he may be freely interchanging the term semitones for color/tension tones. Way more interesting options in minor keys.

[Jerry_L]

 

my second question is probably a bit trickier : I heard (from the very same Howard Goodall) oriental music relied a lot on the pentatonic scale because the notes from this scale were sounding closer one from one another than other notes (for acoustic reasons) and that made this scale sound more earthly, natural... and now, he says oriental music uses semi-tones a lot. so how do I connect these two assertions ? :/

 

 

Chromatically.

 

But seriously, both are true.

[JonR]

 

my second question is probably a bit trickier : I heard (from the very same Howard Goodall) oriental music relied a lot on the pentatonic scale because the notes from this scale were sounding closer one from one another than other notes (for acoustic reasons) and that made this scale sound more earthly, natural... and now, he says oriental music uses semi-tones a lot. so how do I connect these two assertions ? :/

Sounds like you've picked two comments from different contexts.

 

Firstly, the pentatonic scale (and he means major pent) sounds strong because all its tones have relatively simple frequency relationships with one another.

Root-5th = 2:3

Root-3rd = 4:5

2nd to 5th = 3:4

2nd to 6th = 2:3

Root to 2nd = 8:9

6th to root = 5:6

(NB: these ratios don't have to be exact in practice; our ears have a tolerance either side of perfect. As any mathematician will spot, if the 3rd is 4:5 and the 2nd is 8:9, then the interval between 2 and 3 is 9:10 - ie two sizes of whole step.)

Once you bring semitones in, then things get a lot more complicated, and a lot less intuitive.

 

So major pentatonics are pretty common worldwide in different folk cultures. At the same time, while major pent is common in Chinese music (you can get good pseudo-Chinese sounds by messing around on a major pent), Japanese uses other kinds of pentatonic, which feature semitones. And Indonesian music uses some very strange pentatonic scales, with different tuning systems (often deliberately dissonant).

 

IOW (I guess) "oriental" covers various different musical cultures. Slightly naughty of Mr Goodall if he didn't make that clear, but I suppose he didn't want to be distracted from his main point about Cole Porter and minor keys.

(It only takes a little familiarity with CP's music to realise he really got off on mixing parallel major and minor keys. He was always using minor key ii-Vs to resolve to major, and other such shifts between two tonalities. IOW, it wasn't just that he liked minor keys, it was more complicated than that. He seemed to feel that staying in a minor key would be just as boring as staying in major.)

[possopo]

Jerry_L wrote :

Chromatically.

 

perfectly clear, checked, thanks:)

 

JonrR wrote :

IOW (I guess) "oriental" covers various different musical cultures

 

on the documentary about Cole Porter, he was giving examples from Yiddish folk music.

[JonR]

Jerry_L wrote : perfectly clear, checked, thanks:) JonrR wrote : on the documentary about Cole Porter, he was giving examples from Yiddish folk music.

OK! Hardly "oriental", then .

Yiddish is like a lot of European gypsy music - and some North African Arabic music - in using scales like harmonic minor, or its 5th mode, phrygian dominant. Semitones are definitely an important part of music in those parts of the world.

As I understand it, CP was relatively unusual among American songwriters of that period in not being Jewish. However, I found this quote online:

 

By 1926, Cole Porter had already written several Broadway scores,

[possopo]

 

The question seems open as to why he decided that "Jewish tunes" would be hits. Presumably he'd noticed the success of Jewish songwriters - but probably also the appeal of that Eastern Mediterranean influence.

 

yes, I guess this might has to do with the fashion of "orientalism" that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century.

and by oriental, people were only thinking middle-eastern, south and east mediterranean, Caucasian (Georgian/Armenian) or eastern dark mysterious european (Romanian, Ukrainian, possibly also everything jewish Ashkenaz).

[JonR]

 

yes, I guess this might has to do with the fashion of "orientalism" that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century. and by oriental, people were only thinking middle-eastern, south and east mediterranean, Caucasian (Georgian/Armenian) or eastern dark mysterious european (Romanian, Ukrainian, possibly also everything jewish Ashkenaz).

I think it's more to do with the nature of the immigrants to the USA around the beginning of the 20th century: there was a high proportion of Jewish refugees from various European countries, many of whom - for some reason - seemed to find their way into the entertainment industry. Naturally they would have brought their culture with them. I don't know the figures, but it's certainly an interesting cultural phenomenon. Between them, the immigrant Jews (or their offspring) and the native African Americans pretty much got American popular music sewn up! The vibrancy of US popular culture is largely down to them - and was no doubt informed by the hard lives they'd led (and in some cases continued to lead).

Of course the French and the Spanish had their infuence in the south and west... while the English and Celtic influence seems restricted to hillbilly and country music.