Fred writes: << I'll also note that there isn't a lot of historical written evidence for the notion of key color variants based on size of thirds, as an aesthetic consideration when composing. It seems to me that this notion is largely a 20th century extrapolation. Not that it is entirely without basis, but just that the direct evidence that composers thought in that way is slim to none. If you can point me to some, I would be grateful. >> I don't know about the "aesthetic consideration when composing", but Rita Steblin certainly documented a lot of seemingly similar opinions on the emotional character found in the various keys. Though not all identical, most of the quoted authors held not dissimilar views on the extreme keys, whether on the consonant side or dissonant. There is a certain amount of ambiguity concerning the middle keys, but virtually everyone regarded Cmaj in a roughly similar fashion, as well as F#. Too many common denominators in the descriptions, covering a fairly wide period of time, to be disregarded. I have also had pointed out to me that Beethoven was adamant that his piano works not be transposed to other keys, and on a WT, his music produces the coherent changes of tension, (created by tempering), ONLY in the key he wrote the pieces in. If you change to another key, the rise and fall of tempering becomes chaotic rather than progressive. I posted a full analysis of certain passages of LVB, by Enid Katahn, some time ago when D. Love and I were discussing this. It is somewhere in the archives. She clearly points out how he used the rising levels of dissonance in his passages to arrive at a point of resolution, and that resolution is always to a key with less tempering! He only wrote one sonata in F#, and it is a weird, two mvt. compostion. However, if one understands WT's, it makes sense. F# is a hard key to resolve to, since everything in a WT is calmer than the tonic. Regards, Ed Foote RPT http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html <BR><BR><BR>**************<BR>A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1215855013x1201028747/aol?redir=http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=668072%26h mpgID=62%26bcd=DecemailfooterNO62)</HTML>
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