HT wine-tasting (was HT tests)

[Richard Brekne]

A440A@aol.com wrote:

>    I gave the example of two remote key compositions for demonstrating the
> use of highly tempered keys, last week.  In response, it was posted that
> these didn't illuminate the character of the keys because they were,if I
> remember correctly,  in the words of the poster, "lyrical".  The mood of the
> piece doesn't DEPEND on the amount of tempering, it depends on how the
> pianist plays it.  Or, in other words, (Enid Katahn's words),  "The pianist
> can chose to play it dissonantly or expressively".

Unfortunatly this is an incomplete picture of the general nature of art, of which
music is part. The artist may or may not have a definite motive, and may or may
not communicate that well, and the appreciation of any given example is subject
to the filters of the participant appreciator. You have a three fold interactive
process in which there is the object itself, how well the object
s purpose was executed (ie communicated) and how the preception of this object is
experienced by others.

All this means that in the end, what one pianist may "mean" by the
employification of any particular sequence of tonal hue, may very well be
interpreted in quite a different manner. Moreover it may or may not be the intent
of the artist that this should occur.

Art then is at least as complicated as the creative experience, the process of
communication to others of that, and the perception by others of these two.

>
>     It is her, and others contention, that composers chose the keys that they
> did for harmonic reasons, and their writing took advantage of the resources
> found in the various keys.  It was not as simple as pure thirds for this, and
> tempered thirds for that.  The WT's are more complex than ET because they
> have a variety of harmonic values, they are not a homogenized set.   The
> opposition of the fifths and thirds makes analysis of why a key was chosen
> dependant on the composer's intention, ie, there is a difference between a
> passage of pure melodic intervals juxtaposed over a highly tempered harmony
> and one in which the melodic line makes use of "expressive" melodic intervals
> played against a very consonant harmony. How things are
> voiced,(pianistically, not by needles), is heavily influenced by the
> pianist's taste, and this is lost when a reproducer mechanism is playing.

All this valid, and invalid at the same time and all because of the formentioned
nature of the process of art.

>
>     It is natural that we, of 20th century persuasion, want to test all
> things in a scientific manner, however, emotional and musical expression
> often resides in a spiritual realm, where science is forbidden to go.

Science is an art as well. And while emotion and musical expression may be
extrapolets of andular existance, these by no means are non observable in a light
of reasonable objectivity. Or if they be not, then no "scientific" comment may be
made on what is obervable.

> Regards,
> Ed Foote RPT
> www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/
> www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html
>

Cheers

RicB

--
Richard Brekne
RPT, N.P.T.F.
UiB, Bergen, Norway
mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no
http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html