The Joy of Music

Have you ever wondered why” Happy Birthday” sounds, well, happy?  Why does the major key sound happy, and the minor key sound sad? I had a great article on Leonard Bernstein, which I’ve unfortunately lost, but remember him expressing similar views. My friend reminded me of this book of his.

I remember being in college when this question came to me for the first time. I don’t remember when this thought finally took this form of answer, but here is my first attempt at a musical explanation:
As I understand it, sounds – trucks driving by, chalk on the board, cats meowing, singing, everything -  have the overtone series springing from them, all the time everywhere.

So when there is say a pitch, in this case, say a C note, the inaudible overtones immediately accompany this pitch (going up in pitch):
Octave
C
5th
C
MAJOR 3rd
5th
minor 7th
C,
major 2nd
and more.

So the first 5 pitches have what you see above. Since this is floating around us, and probably out in the spheres, there is a sense of “all’s right with the world-ness” to this. When we take the MAJOR 3rd, and we lower it ½ step, we have now thrown off that feeling and replaced it with a sound that we interpret differently.

Here is the part I like: In some cultures, that is taken and used as sad, gloomy, angry, tenderness,
nostalgia, doom. Beethoven’s Pathetique piano sonata is a great example of the troubled angry version:

Other cultures can take the same thing and instead create a feeling of depth, devotion, deeper meaning. Listening to chanting by my Persian friends, for the past 35 years, I get to experience this beauty often:

And with that, I am done here. I have lots more questions. I am interested in hearing any ideas people may have - feel free to leave comments or contact me with your ideas. I’ll follow up with further development of the idea in forthcoming posts.