Ulvi Yurtsever wrote:

>John Smyth:
>
>>While I *wasn't* sleeping while working on my degree, I was fascinated
>>by the musings of my psychology teacher who wondered why there is more
>>music written in the minor mode than in the major.
>
>This sounds wrong to me.  Are you aware of any actual statistic? If I were
>to bet, I would bet on the opposite, that there is more major-mode tonal
>music than minor-mode.

Unless the teacher was thinking of Mendelssohn, I wonder whether s/he may
not have been thinking of music in general, rather than simply Western
classical music.

Shooting totally from the hip here, I suspect folk songs are more likely
to be in minor keys.  Even the classical music based upon eastern and
central European folk melodies seem generally to be in a key other than
major.  Similarly for English music.  Only German and Italian, and maybe
Scandinavian music seems, in my limited experience, to be predominantly
major.

Walter Meyer