Fun Friday: Circle of Fifths in Music

Fun Fridays offer a refreshing mid-day break from work to indulge in physical, mental, or creative activity.

Do you want to know what’s beneath major and minor keys in music, a.k.a. tonality? For example, why does a G major have one sharp in the key signature? In this session, Joo Park discussed the logic of tonal harmony, the circle of fifths, and listened to great music to see how composers unfolded their creativity.

Facilitator: Joo Park, PhD, is a composer and pianist. She seeks to write music that explores the dual nature of existence: simple and complex, obsessive and impulsive, serious and humorous, and tonal and atonal. She wants to create music that combines fascinating musical traditions, such as tonality and counterpoint, with her approach to timbre, chords, fast-changing meters, and texture. She intends to create music that is positive and easy to listen to, and yet intellectual.

Joo is the author of the book Musical Creativity in Composition and Improvisation, published by Springer. Her CD, Passionate Message, published by Silkheart, contains six of her compositions and piano performances. She received a Ph.D in Composition at the University of Minnesota. She is assistant professor of Composition at Berklee College of Music.