[CAUT] using as ETD

[Ed Foote]

Greetings, 
   I wrote:


 A major change is one of greater overall consonance in music, which removes some inherent harshness caused by ET.  
Fred replies: 


>Not to pick nits, but this is only true if you play in the more diatonic keys. If you play in the keys with more sharps or flats, there is more harshness than in ET.

       As one pianist familiar with the WT's said, "One can decide whether the tempering is to be played harshly or expressively".  High tempering affects technicians differently than it does music lovers. I don't hear it as harsh, anymore.  
      The only waythat a WT will cause as much overall dissonance as ET is if all 24 keys areused the same amount, and that does not happen in Western literature.  There is only a certain amount of dissonance to be had.   If it is spread equally, you will hear more dissonance in most piano music because in the entire amount of music composed between 1700 and 1900, there is a lot less remote key usage and a lot more diatonic.  In this repertoire, any well temperament or tuning that even shares the form, will cause there to be less total dissonance than in ET.  Yes, there will be points of higher tempering than the 14 cents, and oddly enough, it seems that composers made the higher tension musically useful.  "Expression" I think is the term. 
Regards, 
Ed Foote RPT

 
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