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
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