I am sorry about having delayed for so long in responding to all the very
thoughtful repsonses to my query...

This missive will be long on some personal info- so skip it if you!re not
interested...

I'm a psychotherapist who has been preparing a muic programme on an
"alernative" radio station- It is called "Voices from Across".

When I first started my programme, I decided to focus on two themes- one
was concerned with stories about stories- about composers', performers'
etc.  lives...That was the easier part.

On the other hand I decided trying to figure out what tonatilty means
in psychological terms.  As soon as I prepared my second programme, on
G Major, (with Beethoven's 4th piano concerto, as well as Bach's prelude
and Fugue from the 1st Well Tempered Clavier); I was met with vehement
oppoisiton from my musician friends who argued that "tonatlity is an
abstract tongue- with no specific emotional colorations attached to various
tonalities- further- that the only musically significant difference so far
as tonality is concerned is taht between the major and the minor tonality".

My initial response was to point to the Mattheson book (of early 18th
century) in which the various emotional "meanings" of various tonalities
are described in somewhat a crude fashion.

But by now I am willing to grant that various tonalities "in themselves"
do not mean anything- but nevertheless I cant but help feel that, as
composers have made use of various tonalities for various end, they have
come to acquire various meanings.

Coming back to D. Minor...  I agree (or rather feel at one) with the
previous posting concerning Mozart K. 421.  For me too, the kernel of what
D Minor meant to was this piece - together with the Bach D. Minor Partita
(the signal music for my radio programmes is the Chaconne).

This post has already become too long...  But my hunch is that, no
tonality has any pre-given meaning but each (? more on that later) acquires
meaning as vaious musicians attribute meanings to them.  So for d Minor we
have the K 421, the Partita and also the Mozart Piano Concerto on that key.
It came as a surprise to me that Beethoven's 9th was also on the same key.
Mopreoever it was a further suprise to realize that Brahms's first venture
into orchestral composition was also in that same key- the First Piano
Concerto.

Hope I have not bored you too much but I would like to pursue this thread.

iskender