Modulation in Music: How about a few examples?

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And now for something completely different.

I've had it up to here with all the depressing stuff going around, so I'm going to write about something that might be interesting to those who have not had a lot of musical instruction.

The whole engine of large scale musical pieces is the idea of harmonic modulation, which is a curious term for moving to other keys.  A key, you might remember, is both a collection of notes (a scale, except that it is the collection of notes, not the particular order), and a note, which is called the tonal center of the key.  The tonal center of the key of C is C itself.  As early as the 11th century, it was recognized that a piece could move away, or "travel" to another key, without harming the identification of the tonal center of the piece.  I just thought I might give you some examples of pieces modulating to one key or another.

Here is a fragment of a little tune (attributed, erroneously, to Haydn, but actually recognized to have been written by a certain monk whose name escapes me at present), which stays in the same key, in this case, G major :



Next, we will show a slightly different part of the same little tune which modulates to the key of D major.  The home key is G, and D is five notes up: G, A, B, C, D (we always count both the first note and the last note; this is a tradition in musical notation).  D is also called the dominant degree of G.  In any key, the fifth note is the Dominant.

This modulation is very minimal.  It sounds as though we just stepped into the neighbor's house for a second, just to get a cup of sugar.  A really good modulation almost makes you forget the home key; e.g. you went next door for the entire week.  But this one is just a passing modulation.  The fact that it modulates at all is something you should hear.  But if you don't trust your ear, you look for a note in the music that does not belong to the key of G, but does belong to the key of D, in this case, C#. There are C naturals up to measure 7, when C# appears.  So the modulation takes place at the last second.  (This is typical for little examples like this, because once you're in the other key, what are you supposed to do?  Usually you fool around a little in the other key, and then make your way back.)


The other most popular destination is the subdominant.  In the case of a tune starting out in G, the subdominant is C major, which is Four notes up from G.  The tune we're using actually does go into C very briefly.  I'm going to try and change the tune significantly enough that the modulation is less fleeting:



Fanilly, (or finally, if you prefer,) we have a modulation to the Relative Minor.  In this case (starting in G) it is E minor, which is a third down.  You should hear, again, that the tune is going seriously minor, but again, if you need notational proof, look for a D#.  There are D#'s all over the place, beginning at bar (or measure) 5:


Unfortunately, these examples were not written to be combined into one grand piece (which someone like Bach would most certainly have done, or even Benjamin Britten), so there is no grand finale.  Just several examples that start out with the same four bars, more or less, and go in different direction.

Gotta run!

[Added later:

Here is a sort of fantasia written on the same little tune as the examples above.

It first goes into D (D major, to be precise), then into A minor, then into E minor,  A second of A major, then D major, then C major, then home to G major, briefly into D major, then back in G to the end.  Musical analysts don't even notice these brief visits into keys, because composers of the 19th Century did that all the time.

This tune is firmly in the classical style, which is about the time of Haydn and Mozart.  In fact it is nearly a folk tune, so normally it would not have much harmonic adventuring at all.


Now, this tune still doesn't have a composer that I know of.  If anyone knows who wrote the tune--the original tune is the last 16 bars or so, and the melody is in the oboe--please let me know.  You can either leave a post on the YouTube page, or make a comment right here.]

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