Greetings,
Certainly no one thought that the temperament discussion was over, did
they? Well, buckle the belts, hide the kids, question beliefs, and for the
uninterested, please delete, now.
I must disagree with David's posting of last month: to wit
(snips to focus on Beethoven)
>>The arbitrary choice is that C is more tranquil than F#. In Beethoven's
Op.90, in >the second movement when the piece moves to a very tranquil E
major, in normal >WT a fairly "active" key, it would benefit from a quieter
key. In all honesty, I don't >think Beethoven was thinking of different
temperaments when he wrote that, >though I can't, of course, know for sure.
> Thus the choice of using a WT that creates more activity in E major seems
to be >imposing a personal taste in tuning that is not appropriate to the
piece. I am sure >there are also pieces where the revcerse could be argued.
To try and argue the >superiority of WT over ET and that WT has more color
and therefore is more >interesting, musical, dynamic, multi-dimensional, etc.
is a meaningless waste of >time.<<
Since David cited specific passages, I sought the response of a pianist
by forwarding this post to Enid Katahn, (the pianist that has played on the
temperament CD's). I shall post her comments below in "quotation marks", but
first, to address one thing, when David writes:
>>"The arbitrary choice is that C is more tranquil than F#". <<
Not arbitrary at all, but a logical and widely accepted way to temper
prior to 1900. This basic arrangement stayed constant from Weckmeister to
Braid-White. In this tuning that evolved out of refined meantone philosophy
and the Holder bearing plan, C would always have been more "tranquil" than
F#.
Since virtually everyone who published temperaments and how to create
them in the years between 1700 and 1850 obeyed this same order to the keys,
I think it plausible to assume that all pre-1880 composers were familiar with
how the "colors" progressed in keyboard tuning and illogical to think that the
greatest composer of the era would be oblivious to these characteristic
differences between keys.
So, back to the original post by Dave:
>>There are some pieces where you could argue that a reverse of that system
would be better; for example, Beethoven's op. 90. The opening in
Em(relative of G major) which is filled with tension might benefit from a
reverse WT.
To which Enid repsonds;
"Not true. Just because a key is more dissonant than Cmaj. doesn't
neccessarily mean it isn't peaceful. There is a difference between dissonance
as harshness and dissonance as emotionality, or expressiveness". In this
piece, Beethoven was looking for keys with more expression. As he goes
through, there are places where he creates a lot more contrast than he would
have in a more consonant key, such as C major."
Several examples:
bar 9: Beginning in a Gmaj, this passage moves downward, finally passing
through Cmaj before ending on a B triad. So, LVB places the most consonant
chord on the keyboard immediately before one of the most highly tempered. On
a WT , this juxtaposition creates a great harmonic contrast. The
pianist/historian's perspective on this is " This extreme contrast may be
read as LvB's way of letting us know that there is something going on under
the surface and it is not all as peaceful as you might think". (If LVB did
write this piece for his sponsor Baron Lichnowsky and his wife , it could be
making a musical referrence to the stormy marriage that they hid below the
verneer of civility in public. Beethoven is known for this sort of
stuff..Call the musicologists!!.)
However, what if Beethoven had written Op. 90 in C?
"If op. 90 had been composed in the "more consonant" key of C, Bar 9 would
have moved from from G to C, causing a change in how the passage works,
especially the last two chords. In the original key, the final modulation
from C to B creates a particularly strong musical resolution of this passage,
a resolution suggesting something mysterious. Had the sonata been in C, the
move from F to E would not be as dramatic. Instead, the passage would end
with two chords more similar to one another instead of its original very
"expressive" chord played against a background of maximum consonance."
In view of the above, when David writes "to argue that WT has more color
and therefore is more interesting, musical, dynamic,
multi-dimensional,<snip>is a waste of time". , I must disagree for the
following reason, among others:
In WT this modulation changes not only the pitch of the interval, but
also the beating, or "color', whereas in ET, only the pitch changes. Since
more happens when you drop 100 cents while changing from a 7 cent to a 19
cent third than when you simply drop everything 100 cents and the ratios stay
the same, I consider the WT to be more "multi-dimensional" and dynamic than
ET. The WT modulation is certainly more complex, even in the simplest
physical terms.
I would suggest that harmonic contrast, used in the above example, works
to enhance the expressive intentions of this music. (this is in the opening
bars, where we normally expect to find the musical expectations and hints of
things to come to be laid out). The choice of key determines the degrees of
contrast in the passages and I don't think Beethoven left those to anything
arbitrary.
Example 2: second mvt. going into bar 32,
The original choice for this passage in C#minor, a very colorful,
expressive key in WT. Enid writes:
" had Beethoven written op 90 in C, this would place this passage in Am,
which defeats the whole purpose. Am is a pleasant, peaceful sound, all the
way through, but this passage is supposed to be full of emotion". Played in
the key of Am on a Young temperament, the passage sounded lifeless to the
several listeners present.
Example 3: The passage beginning at 115.
Here, Beethoven goes from one extreme of consonance to the other, and does
it in a very refined fashion. Starting in C, he moves through Cm, C#min,
C#, Emaj, E7, then crashing B's resolving to E. In a WT, these modulations
create a steady rise in the amount of tension leading up to the climatic B,
from which, in the final move to E, creates a strong resolution. A
masterful example of using progressively increasing tempering as the passage
develops, arriving at a point of maximum "expression" (B) just before the
final resolution (to E). The emotionality or expression of the piece is
heightened by this coherent, organized increase.
However,
If the sonata were in C, this progression would have begun in Ab!
Hardly a consonant pleasant beginning, and a place from which it will be
difficult to increase tension. That is a very intense key to begin a passage
such as this! Where is there to go??
Had Op.90 been composed in the "more consonant" Key of C, the movement
would travel through:
Ab, Abm , Am, A, C C7 G then ending on C. So, the passage
would have had the softening of the tempering going against the rise of
musical tension plus that odd return to consonance in the middle A to C move.
Also, the climatic, expressive chord would not be the original's heavily
tempered B, but rather, a usually dulcet G. This would be an odd use of
temperament and wouldn't be supportive of the musical direction the passage
exhibits.
All in all, Enid Katahn feels like Beethoven knew exactly what he was
doing. The "color" effects created in a WT consistantly work with the
musical direction of his music. This is to be expected, since,as she points
out, composers didn't just start with the first note and go through to the
end, but rather, they had distinct musical moments that they would go about
linking together, figuring out how to get from here to there,etc. In
anything but ET, the choice of key is a fundamental component of how the
harmony functionswith the musical direction.
One mistake that is often made is to equate dissonance with bad,
consonance with good. This totally sidesteps the musical qualities of
contrast. We know that there are physical reactions to the various levels of
temperament, and the music certainly seems to support their use in consistant
ways. It would be a shame if Beethoven used these musical qualities and we
missed them, entirely, because of our allegiance to a status quo.
I, and others that have delved into it, are finding that these qualities
are very attractive to pianists. Yes, they can be cast in a crude and
counterproductive light as "out of tune", but I suggest that comes from a
musically limiting viewpoint. Drawing the curtains before seeing the play is
no way to find out what the story really is. There is nothing magical
about a 13.7 cent third. Restricting oneself to a single temperament, for
life, a person should have an extremely good reason to do so, and such a
decision should be as informed as possible.
Physically, there is more complexity in a well-temperament than an
equal one, and music performed on a WT is de facto more harmonically complex.
If the variety appeared random, one could question why a composer was
writing seemingly irrespective of the keys' characters, however, key usage
isn't random or arbitrary.
In a passage by passage examination, this complexity often appears to
be an intention of composers such as Beethoven. The effects are not easily
measured, except by direct comparison, as in side by side listening to a WT
and a ET. This has been done in the past and I believe the results usually
favor the non-ET tuning.
What's are these differences worth? That depends on how we use them. What
is a "meaningless waste of time" to one person is a path to a deeper
understanding of music for others. I don't think a musical genius like
Beethoven was composing piano music in ignorance of the way the keys sounded,
and the preponderance of evidence points to WT being the standard of his day.
So when David decries "imposing a personal taste in tuning that is not
appropriate to the piece", I must respond that I see the use of 20th century
tuning for 18th and 19th century music as a far more dramatic example of
imposing personal tastes, and that any almost any form of WT would provide
less of an imposition.
Regards,
Ed Foote RPT
(Stay tuned for more. I've some modern reasons too! )
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