Catherine's song choices

So, a strange thing happened while picking my English songs this year. I love singing in English, not only because of the beautiful poetry that is often used, but also because the text is so immediately accessible to the audience... Needless to say, I have a million songs that I would like to sing and I always have a hard time picking! This year, I brought a nice big pile to Sandra to have a bit of a sing-through, and she pointed out that almost all of the songs I picked, (I'm talking 90% of them!) were in either F major or B flat major! In programming a set, this can be problematic because even if the songs contain different harmonic progressions, rhythmic motives, poetry and melodies, it all ends up sounding like a wash of the same landscape over and over. And that leads to sleepy listeners! This is not something I had noticed while sifting through my top choices, but I thought, OK, I'll check the back-up repertoire that I had brought to see if we could get some more key variety in the set... They were all in F major or B flat major as well! So, what is going on here? I admit to being especially fond of a certain type of song -- long lyrical lines, beautiful text, and most likely on the slower side -- but why are composers writing this type of piece in these keys? I don't really have an answer but I have been throwing around some ideas. Range could be one factor, but then, as a soprano, I could be singing lots of songs in G major or A major (those being common high notes in a art song for my voice type), so that doesn't quite answer this for me. More interestingly, many composers talk about the feel of certain keys. There seems to me to be a certain warmth and intimate "softness" in many of the flat keys (with which F major and B flat major belong) and a brightness and perky positivity associated with sharp keys. This is not a quantifiable statement but something that some composers and musicians seem to agree upon. The feelings generated by specific keys themselves are most clear when looked at from the view-point of those with synesthesia. Although this is a very rare condition, I think it is worth looking at. Those with synesthesia will see a colour when they see a number, or taste something when they see a colour. In other words, their sense of smell, taste or sound are somehow involuntarily connected. More relevant to this discussion is that some synesthetes see colour when they hear music! And, amazingly, some (though not all synestheses) seem to agree upon what colour or range of colours a particular key or note produces. (For an informative history of synesthesia and music, check out this link: http://www.thereminvox.com/article/articleview/33/1/5/)
Let's focus on F major for a minute. According to Rimsky-Korsakov (a synesthetic composer) the key of F major is green, which makes sense since most of my F major pieces are about nature and love or both. In the baroque time, works based on pastoral themes were often written in F major. Even more interesting, (to me anyways) is that the heart chakra (love again!) corresponds with the key of F and is also linked to the colour green! (Check out this site if you want to read about chakras, music, and colour:
http://www.leadingshield.com/chakra%20page.htm)
Now, I'm not suggesting that all of my song selections were written by composers with synesthesia, but if some people have an amplified connection between keys and colours, couldn't us regular folk be drawn to certain keys when looking for a certain timbre or emotional response? Maybe I'm going a bit far with this, but I don't think much of coincidences.
As for our up-coming recital series, I feared that I should dig into even more repertoire and find a variety of key signatures to round out the set. Lucky for me, lovely Sandra Mogensen offered to transpose a few of them (yes, she can transpose a piece at sight beautifully!) to make sure that we aren't all just 'seeing green' for 15 minutes!
Enough of this chat for today though... now I need to memorize!
Catherine