Talk:Symphony No. 3 (Szymanowski)

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Key of the symphony.[edit]

I've just corrected the key of this symphony - the key is a little indefinite, and not named by the composer, but it is closer to C major than to any other key, and certainly has nothing to do with B-flat major.

To be totally exact, I would describe the key as "C", without specifying major or minor, because the work is in that late-romantic/impressionist style that tends to blur tonality and modality to some extent. But if you want a full key specification, C major is better than anything else.

The symphony starts with largely whole-tone-scale harmony, with a long, deep pedal point on low C, which lasts for a couple of pages of full score - and the end of the symphony is based on C, too - so it's certainly closer to C major than anything else.

I have just corrected this same error on imslp.org, and was curious about how this mistake arose in two different places.

Then I saw that one of the given references in this article, to the publisher's web site, lists it as being in B-flat major, and it all became clear. Naturally, the contributors to the Wikipedia and IMSLP.org articles on the symphony accepted without question the publisher's statement about the key, as I would normally do myself if I didn't already know this symphony.

But it is incorrect - the publisher's web page has got it wrong. I have heard this symphony, and also own a copy of the full orchestral score, so I am completely certain of this.

The Symphony no. 2 by Szymanowski is in B-flat major (and also listed as such in Wikipedia), and what I think probably happened is that someone working on the publisher's web site momentarily got the two symphonies confused and made a typing error, giving the key of Bb major wrongly to the 3rd Symphony, instead of (or maybe as well as) to the 2nd Symphony. M.J.E. (talk) 08:55, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please familiarize yourself with WP:NOR – your own personal conclusions are original research, unless you can back them up with verifiable sources, no matter how "evident" you feel your findings are. Original research is no base for edits. As this concern the official (published) title of the symphony, the main source would be the published score, which has NO key signature at all, neither in the title nor in the score itself. Removed key signature according to source. -- megA (talk) 16:33, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, describing the key of a musical composition often falls into the category of WP:BLUE. In this case the work begins with a long C pedal and ends on a C major chord: there's no reasonable doubt as to the key. The only reason I haven't reinstated this fact on the page is that for Szymanowski's style at the time, it's not particularly interesting or important to know what key it's in: it doesn't have the same strong associations as the key of a piece by Bach or Beethoven. Not worth starting an edit war over, except that I don't like to see WP:NOR thrown around with such disregard for common sense. Jowa fan (talk) 11:15, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]