Sonate Moonlight music sheet confusion

[vstpluginsliker]

Trying to read Sonate Moonlight musical sheet, i know that the sharp symbols at the beginning affect all the notes in the same LINE that the sharp is on but why does it also affect the bottom starting notes? is it because of that weird C symbol at the beginning?

Sonate Moonlight is supposed to start with Ab Db E in the first measure but it shows A C E in the musical sheet.

[jancivil]

C with the line through it indicates 2/2 time. for this it isn't very relevant, it's de facto 4/4.

No, the sharps in a signature indicate that all the Fs, Cs, Gs, Ds are sharp until otherwise indicated.
Ab Db E is not right. Donno where you get that "supposed to", you don't mix flats and sharps to that extent in tonal music. If the key were Db minor, the notes will be Ab Db Fb. Triadic harmony, meaning the construction is in thirds: 1 2 3, C D E; 1 3 5, C E G. Regardless of sharp or flat.
Db to E is an augmented second. (That specifically does occur, though, as the last two scale tones in F harmonic minor for example. F minor is far from C# minor and Db minor is all the way around the 12-key circle. You could write it like that, it's not different on a 12-tone equal piano but the convention is, ya don't arbitarily mix key names.)

G# C# E as is written there, C# minor triad in the key of C# minor.

[jancivil]

...

[mladi]

Trying to read Sonate Moonlight musical sheet, i know that the sharp symbols at the beginning affect all the notes in the same LINE that the sharp is on but why does it also affect the bottom starting notes? is it because of that weird C symbol at the beginning?

Sonate Moonlight is supposed to start with Ab Db E in the first measure but it shows A C E in the musical sheet.

Sorry but you really need some lessons in basic music reading. Very basic music reading.

[vstpluginsliker]

C with the line through it indicates 2/2 time. for this it isn't very relevant, it's de facto 4/4.

No, the sharps in a signature indicate that all the Fs, Cs, Gs, Ds are sharp until otherwise indicated.
Ab Db E is not right. Donno where you get that "supposed to", you don't mix flats and sharps to that extent in tonal music. If the key were Db minor, the notes will be Ab Db Fb. Triadic harmony, meaning the construction is in thirds: 1 2 3, C D E; 1 3 5, C E G. Regardless of sharp or flat.
Db to E is an augmented second. (That specifically does occur, though, as the last two scale tones in F harmonic minor for example. F minor is far from C# minor and Db minor is all the way around the 12-key circle. You could write it like that, it's not different on a 12-tone equal piano but the convention is, ya don't arbitarily mix key names.)

G# C# E as is written there, C# minor triad in the key of C# minor.

Ok i misunderstood the beginning sharps.
Youtube tutorials play it Ab Db E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLtMwVVO64A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbTVZMJ9Z2I

[jancivil]

You might notice in that first thumbnail that all the black keys are marked with a flat. Again, third of the chord Dbm will be Fb. Full stop. Because coherency. Db to E, one more time, is not a third: D to E, 1 to 2. D to F, 1 to 3. The chords are built on thirds in the entire style period. You could have Db to E in a scalar kind of a line for eg., F minor but the harmony containing the two will look like E G Bb Db (viiº7 of F minor).

FACT: there are seven key signatures using sharps, from G/E minor with 1 to C#/A# minor with 7. All with zero flats in 'em.

You see in the score what the notes are, yeah? It's C# minor. Chances it will have been Db minor at that juncture in history (before 12tET) are nil

do whatever.

[vstpluginsliker]

You might notice in that first thumbnail that all the black keys are marked with a flat. Again, third of the chord Dbm will be Fb. Full stop. Because coherency. Db to E, one more time, is not a third: D to E, 1 to 2. D to F, 1 to 3. The chords are built on thirds in the entire style period. You could have Db to E in a scalar kind of a line for eg., F minor but the harmony containing the two will look like E G Bb Db (viiº7 of F minor).

FACT: there are seven key signatures using sharps, from G/E minor with 1 to C#/A# minor with 7. All with zero flats in 'em.

You see in the score what the notes are, yeah? It's C# minor. Chances it will have been Db minor at that juncture in history (before 12tET) are nil

do whatever.

Sorry you're confusing me--too much info for this noob. All I'm saying is that in the YT videos the 3 notes they're playing in the first measure are Ab Db E (and it sounds good).

[fmr]

You might notice in that first thumbnail that all the black keys are marked with a flat. Again, third of the chord Dbm will be Fb. Full stop. Because coherency. Db to E, one more time, is not a third: D to E, 1 to 2. D to F, 1 to 3. The chords are built on thirds in the entire style period. You could have Db to E in a scalar kind of a line for eg., F minor but the harmony containing the two will look like E G Bb Db (viiº7 of F minor).

FACT: there are seven key signatures using sharps, from G/E minor with 1 to C#/A# minor with 7. All with zero flats in 'em.

You see in the score what the notes are, yeah? It's C# minor. Chances it will have been Db minor at that juncture in history (before 12tET) are nil

do whatever.

Sorry you're confusing me--too much info for this noob. All I'm saying is that in the YT videos the 3 notes they're playing in the first measure are Ab Db E (and it sounds good).

YOU are confusing things. You lack music theory basics, that's the problem. And trying to learn something from YouTube when you lack some basic concepts will only lead to more confusion and problems.

Your Ab is enharmonic to G#. Db is enharmonic to C#. E is E. Enharmonic means that the two notes share the same sound (in a piano or any other keyboard, they are played in the same key, and have the same sound). That's why they sound good to you - THEY ARE THE SAME SOUNDS. Yet they are different notes. Read this to further clarify the concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enharmonic

So, when you call G# > Ab, and C# > dB, you end up with a chord that has Ab, Db and E, which makes no sense in classic harmony. However, if you call it G#, C# and E, you have the C# minor chord. See why it is important to call them the right names? Is like two similar languages (like my native Portuguese and Spanish, for example). The two are very similar, yet if we mix words form both, with end up with gibberish then neither Portuguese nor Spanish can understand. However, if the phrase is written in Spanish, or in Portuguese, usually both natives can understand both.

That sonata is written in the key of C# minor. That key has four fixed sharps, and an occurring fifth sharp (B#). B# is played in the keyboard in the C note. Yet you don't call it C, you call it B#, because you already have a C in the scale (C#) and you can't have two notes in the scale with the same name (you can't have two Cs).

So, when you play those notes, please call them WHAT THE COMPOSER CALLED THEM, which was G# and C#, and not what you think they are. Just because you like flats more, it doesn't mean all black notes have to be flats (usually it's the other way, and people call sharps to notes which are actually flats, BTW).

[fmr]

You see in the score what the notes are, yeah? It's C# minor. Chances it will have been Db minor at that juncture in history (before 12tET) are nil

12 Tone Equal Temperament started with Bach. This is from Beethoven. Of course there was already Equal Temperament

[Erisian]

What I see on the sheet is very simple. G# (=Ab), C#(=Db) and E. The sharp symbols apply not just to the notes on their line but the same notes on other octaves too. ( by = I mean enharmonic to as fmr has explained ) I hope this has simplified what the others have already said.

[vurt]

the mix up is coming from that pootube video.
he's got flats on every black note except f# for some reason?

not like a pootuber to mess things up...

[jancivil]

You see in the score what the notes are, yeah? It's C# minor. Chances it will have been Db minor at that juncture in history (before 12tET) are nil

12 Tone Equal Temperament started with Bach. This is from Beethoven. Of course there was already Equal Temperament

Bach used well-temperament. Decidedly not the same thing.
https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~mrubinst ... uning.html

[jancivil]

Ah, here it is:
Historically this number was proposed for the first time in relationship to musical tuning in 1580 (drafted, rewritten 1610) by Simon Stevin.[2] In 1581 Italian musician Vincenzo Galilei may be the first European to suggest twelve-tone equal temperament.[1] The twelfth root of two was first calculated in 1584 by the mathematician and musician Zhu Zaiyu using an abacus to reach twenty four decimal places,[1] calculated circa 1605 by Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin,[1] in 1636 by the French mathematician Marin Mersenne and in 1691 by German musician Andreas Werckmeister.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_r ... wo#History

There are many assertions of its use but they are calling approximations of it that thing, which is more or less a 20th century phenomenon.
A precise equal temperament is possible using the 17th-century Sabbatini method of splitting the octave first into three tempered major thirds.[32] This was also proposed by several writers during the Classical era. Tuning without beat rates but employing several checks, achieving virtually modern accuracy, was already done in the first decades of the 19th century.[33] Using beat rates, first proposed in 1749, became common after their diffusion by Helmholtz and Ellis in the second half of the 19th century.[34] The ultimate precision was available with 2-decimal tables published by White in 1917.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_equal_ ... aroque_era

I spent some time trying to get ahold of documentation regarding Beethoven's use of temperaments before I typed that. One thing I did find is discussion of one Christian Schubart getting poetic about qualities of keys.
I don't expect that he used actual 12tET to be confirmed frankly.

I found a number of other useful things researching this before I posted. Including this:

3. Werckmeister III and Bach's W.T.C.

If you are or were ever a college music student, you probably read, or were told, that Johann Sebastian Bach wrote his collection of preludes and fugues The Well-Tempered Clavier in all 24 major and minor keys in order to demonstrate equal tempered tuning.

If so, you were misinformed.

Bach did not use equal temperament. In fact, in his day there was no way to tune strings to equal temperament, because there were no devices to measure frequency. They had no scientific method to achieve real equal-ness; they could only approximate.

Bach was, however, interested in a tuning that would allow him the possibility of working in all 12 keys, that did not make certain triads off-limits. He was a master of counterpoint, and chafed and fumed when the music in his head demanded a triad on A-flat and the harpsichord in front of him couldn't play it in tune. (In fact, he once tormented the famous organ tuner Silbermann by playing sour Ab-major triads while trying out one of his organs.) So he was glad to see tuners develop a tuning that, today, is known as well temperament. Back then, they did call it equal temperament (or sometimes circulating temperament) - not because the 12 pitches were equally spaced, but because you could play equally well in all keys. Each key, however, was a little different, and Bach wrote The Well-Tempered Clavier in all 24 major and minor keys in order to capitalize on those differences, not because the differences didn't exist.
[...]
The theorist who came up with the easiest way to tune the kind of well temperament Bach needed was the German organist Andreas Werckmeister (1645-1706), whose most famous tuning, dating from 1691, is known as Werckmeister III.
https://www.kylegann.com/histune.html

[jancivil]

Well Tempering and Key Character
The defining characteristics of Well Temperament is the tonal variety that exists between the keys. The comma is neither condensed into a few combinations nor spread evenly among all; rather, it is dispensed into the various keys in differing amounts.

This allotment of dissonance was the subject of intense debate among the theorists and musicians of the 18th and 19th centuries, yet there was a common form to virtually all Well Temperaments. The common form was that the "all white note" keys of C major and A minor, (with no accidentals in the key signature) contained the most harmoniously tuned Maj3rds, far more in tune than our modern Equal Temperament. The other "simple" keys such as G, F, or E minor were slightly tempered. Keys with yet more accidentals, (requiring the use of more black notes), absorbed greater amounts of the commas, causing the dissonance to increase in those keys. Hence, there was a range of harmony and dissonance available to the composer.

Associations between emotional response and musical harmony are very old; they were discussed in ancient Greece. Certain tunings (modes), were considered warlike, others were felt as peaceful. Some tuning, according to Plato, should not be heard by developing young minds, while exposure to others was considered essential to the full development of one's potential.

By Beethoven's day, the concept of " Key Character " (in which different keys conveyed specific emotional meanings), was much refined. A widely read and influential list of keys and their affective qualities, written by Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart and published posthumously in 1806, contained the fashionable descriptions for all major and minor keys. In this list, he describes the "character" of keys thusly:
"C minor. Declaration of love and at the same time the lament of unhappy love. ---All languishing, longing, sighing of the love-sick soul lies in this key."
"E major. Noisy shouts of joy, laughing pleasure and not yet complete, full delight lies in E major."
"C# minor. Penitential lamentation; sighs of disappointed friendship and love lie in its radius."
"C major is completely pure. Its character is: innocence, simplicity, naivety, children's talk"

https://www.piano-tuners.org/edfoote/index.html

[fmr]

You see in the score what the notes are, yeah? It's C# minor. Chances it will have been Db minor at that juncture in history (before 12tET) are nil

12 Tone Equal Temperament started with Bach. This is from Beethoven. Of course there was already Equal Temperament

Bach used well-temperament. Decidedly not the same thing.
https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~mrubinst ... uning.html

You are right. That's not the same thing, just an approximation. But even today, not all instruments use Equal Temperament. I tend to confuse sometimes Well Temperament with Equal Temperament. Bach used the Werckmeister indeed.

Anyway, that list of "Key Character" of the different tonalities is more about "poetry" than physical qualities, and is a tendency that dates already from the Greeks (as you stated). There were also "lists" in the Middle Ages, regarding the modes. I don't pay much attention to that, besides historical curiosity. But I know that Beethoven had some associations present. For example, the F Major key was associated with the nature and countryside (hence the Pastoral written in F), and the D Major key associated with majesty and power (hence the Missa Solemnis written in D Major).

Anyway, since the Well Temperament is just an approximation, there are differences between the tonalities, of course, but those aren't strong enough, IMO, to prevent a piece in Db minor (especially since, in the keyboard, it would sound the same as C# minor). But Db minor is the relative of Fb minor. That tonality would have a double flat in the key signature. I don't know any written piece with a key signature containing double flats or double sharps. Maybe there are some, but I don't know any, and it wouldn't make sense, IMO.

I also observed some curious things, regarding tonalities in Bach. Usually, his works with key signatures containing flats (especially the minor keys, like D minor, G minor, C minor and F minor) tend to be more complex and more elaborated, both harmonically as contrapuntistically. This is especially notorious in C minor and F minor.

However I doubt he knew and/or subscribed to that Schubart list, considering that, for example, the 5th Symphony, which is all about fate and destiny drama, is in the key of C minor. And the 3rd Symphony, which is about death, glory and heroism, is in the key of Eb Major (should be in D, if he was somehow faithful to the list - yet he chose a key that is related to the one in which he would later write the 5th Symphony, which seems to point to a different understanding of the meanings).