Does it really make difference to play a song in a different key?

Question

I hear sometimes players and composers say that this song won't sound good in F Major for example, and you should play it or write it in G Major (this was just an example). In other words, it seems that they assign aesthetic attributes to keys. My question is that, imagine a baby growing up in an isolated island, and hear all the songs of his entire life in F Major (all re-written for F Major), while another baby grow up in another isolated island and hear all the songs of his entire life in G Major. Now, is there an objective, real difference in the amount of pleasure they can get from same songs written for different keys? This has really obsessed my mind, as I'm not sure if great composers really feel difference in songs being played in different keys. Did Beethoven for example felt Moonlight more sad in key X rather than being played in key Y?

Answer 1

There are composers that used certain keys for certain emotions. Here is an interesting dissertation. See pages 64-82 from "The affective properties of keys in instrumental music from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries" by Maho A Ishiguro. It won't let me copy the link directly to it, but I found it on Google.