Waltz in Gb

Welcome back to Tea with Liya! Today, I'm playing another song by Frederic Chopin - this one is a Waltz in Gb major. It turns out that if the instructions in Chopin's will had been followed, this song would never have existed today. Maybe there could be a good reason to not follow someone's instructions ... or is there? I hope you like listening to it!


Listen to the song here
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If you find a song that's "in Gb," then it's probably in Gb major - it's simply a notation shortcut that is used, because you're more likely to find a song in Gb major than Gb minor. I haven't independently verified that fact, but I think it's a reasonable assumption to make. Don't blame me for spreading false information. In fact, I haven't played a lot of songs in Gb, but it appears that Frederic Chopin decided to do something different with it. (By the way, if you see a Gb, the "b" is supposed to stand for "flat," which looks like this: ♭, but that looks close enough to a "b" for me to use a "b," doesn't it?)

While I'm talking about major and minor keys, I'll mention that you will almost never find a major key that will be written with a sharp (#, which actually isn't the correct symbol for a sharp, either) after it. You're going to say, "There's so many black keys down there. Why can't you write scales using those?"

Okay, let's say we wanted to try making a scale using one of these keys. I'm not going to go through all of the notes, but let's just look at two or three so you can understand.

The third black key on this piano is called an A#. If you wanted to start a scale on this note, the next note you would need would be a B# (it's usually called a C, but the next note has to use the next letter in the alphabet). Now, the next note we need has to be labeled with a C, but we would need to have two sharps on the note for the label to point to the correct key. That means it's no longer a valid scale.

Therefore, this scale is written using flats, and you never do see the sharps that it could have used. It turns out that there's actually only two black keys on a piano on which you can write a scale using sharps. However, the scales can also be written using flats, so you almost never see a major key with a sharp after it.

Chopin could have called this song a waltz in F#, but he called it a waltz in Gb instead. (In fact, he doesn't even write the key as part of his song titles. He doesn't really write much in those at all.)

So why did I say that this song could have never existed? It actually turns out that Chopin had written some songs that he never published. Perhaps because he hadn't "finished" the songs yet, he wanted the manuscripts to be burned upon his death. However, his family members, who enjoyed his music, refused to destroy the pages and decided to keep them for another piano player to find. 

Chopin probably didn't think that his music would have an effect on people two hundred years later. He had been suffering from low income and awkward relationships, as did many artists at the time, for years. He probably didn't foresee becoming one of the "big 3 composers" of the Romantic era, the time period in which he lived. (Perhaps the term "romantic" could be applied literally if you consider a song by Franz Liszt, another popular composer of the time, which I am planning to record.)

However, we now have more of his songs than we expected to have, so because his family didn't follow his request, he's actually made more of an influence. That doesn't mean that you should ignore the requests of your family members, though. It could actually be illegal to circumvent someone's will.

Chopin might have thought that his unpublished songs weren't good enough for the public to hear, but if you look at a song like this one, I would definitely say that it is!

Keep filling your teacup with music!
~Liya