Yes.. one subtle compositional technique in F# or B maj for example that creates an illusion of greater calm is not using the third on a primary beat. On 2 or 4 as opposed to 1 or 3 in 4/4 time. I know several examples of this in Chopin. For better or worse we are talking about people who didn't take much to expressing themselves with words. For all we know they may not have even given it a lot of thought. These colors were the prevailing keyboard language of the time, and they worked with it. cheers, Dennis Johnson St. Olaf _______ On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 1:50 PM, <A440A at aol.com> wrote: > 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<http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1215855013x1201028747/aol?redir=http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=668072%26hmpgID=62%26bcd=DecemailfooterNO62> > )</HTML> > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090115/b010e4e9/attachment.html>
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