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Why give tune key (and which?) in Authority page?

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Home » Forums » Hymnary Editor Room
Mon, 02/25/2013 - 11:38 — Haruo

I just linked the tune at NzIY2003 #40 to its authority, and found that the tune authority specifies C Major as the key, even though not only the instance I just linked but also exactly half of the total instances (and a significant majority of the post-1979 ones) are in Bb Major.

Music is not my forte in hymnology, I'm a text guy, but my impression is that any tune can be easily transposed into any key. So while I think showing the key for a given instance may be useful, it seems to me that specifying a key for the authority may be a waste of electron power. What is the rationale behind giving this information in the authority? And is the authority's choice of keys based on first publication or on the preponderance of instances? (If the latter, then at the moment C Major is correct for HALLELUJAH WHAT A SAVIOR (Bliss), since there are 16 C Major instances and 15 Bb Major instances showing. But actually there are 16 of each, because the CCEH PDF is in Bb Major but doesn't show a Key in the instance data.


Comments

Mon, 02/25/2013 - 11:43 — Haruo

I would think that knowing whether a tune was set in duple or triple or other time (9/8, e.g.) would be at least as useful as whether it was in this or that key. And sometimes it makes a difference within a hymnal, e.g. CLH2006 has two hymns set to DIVINUM MYSTERIUM. One (#80) is in triple meter marked 3/4 time, the other (#86) is in duple meter but the time is unmarked (looks like 10/8 to my untutored eye).

Mon, 02/25/2013 - 15:49 — hplantin

If I'm not mistaken, we don't normally enter keys for authorities, just for instances. Because of the way the database is structured, all of the things you can enter for instances, you can enter for authorities, and vice versa. But we don't use them all.

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