the temperament thing

[A440A@AOL.COM]

Howard writes: 
<< Absolutely!!  You are under the impression that the purpose of a modulation
> is only to hear a color change. Wrong! The beauty of a modulation is the
> *trip* not the *destination*.

    That is not my impression of modulation.  I expect modulation to create a 
change of musical tension.  Going to another key creates a change by the 
movement itself in any tuning, however in WT, modulation can create  a 
different musical quality, ( if the composer desires, there is that "key 
choice" thing again).  In ET, the same level of dissonance exists in all 
keys, so you may be in a new place, but the harmonic background is still the 
same.  Sorta like getting off the train in the exact same place you left.  My 
musical preference likes to go to different places.   
    When I asked about why not use just one key,  I was referring to the 
choice of key for a composition, as in the sonata, NOT lack of modulation.   
This choice merely denotes the home key, from which all modulations take the 
listener to and from.  If there is no difference between keys, then why not 
compose everything in the easiest key to play (making say, B the tonic, since 
it is "hand friendly",) and then modulating through the normal sonata form 
changes. 
  This would be limiting.     

      So what does modulation do? It seems that when composers modulated from 
one key to another, they were changing the musical tension of the music.  If 
we study the way they did this, we find that when increasing the musical 
tension, the modulation moves farther into the dissonance, and when calming 
down, the modulations move toward consonance.  This makes use of involuntary, 
emotional, responses in the listener.  We react to dissonance differently 
than we do consonance, and it seems that Beethoven and Schubert et al knew 
this and used the inequality to increase the effects they were after.  When 
relaxing the musical tension, they did not go to a key with more dissonance 
in the thirds, they went the other way.    You rarely find classical piano 
compositions approaching their finales from a more consonant key, making 
their last modulation to a "higher" key, one with more "color".  This would 
not use the differences to create "resolution", but rather, unresolved 
expectation, leaving listeners restless; decreasing the feeling of resolution 
simply by involutary means.  There is a bit of the "tight-shoe" theory here.
    
    By moving from one key to another in ET, all you do is change pitch 
centers, so the increase or decrease in tension must be solely a function of 
the composition and intellectually created in the minds of the listener.  In 
a WT, those same modulations have the added circuitry of increasing or 
decreasing levels of dissonance, which has been proven to create additional 
emotional response in the majority of listeners.  Thus my contention that the 
emotional effects are heightened in WT.  This is also the major response I 
have gotten from pianists.          
 
     And for the record, my entire endeavor inre temperament has been to 
encourage a multi-temperament approach by the modern technician, using modern 
technology.  To do this requires a certain amount of judgement, hence risk.   
Some cannot stand to be put in this position of decision-making, thus the 
status quo represents safety and they will defend their reliance on it to the 
end. Others will be attached to ET because of the sameness to be found in the 
keys and the beauty of a 14 cent third.  To each his own.    
      I have NEVER suggested that any one temperament supplant all others, so 
my focus is NOT on elimination of ET, WT, MT or AFT, but rather, the addition 
of more choices to our tuning capabilities.  
     To those that would claim that any one temperament is superior to all 
others, I can only say, "Perhaps you have your head out of the sand, there is 
more than one way to tune a piano". 
Regards, 
Ed Foote RPT