Klarinet Archive - Posting 000593.txt from 2006/03

From: Andrew Grenci <agrenci@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Re: Keys (from Let's get real)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 21:08:19 -0500

Roger - A key phrase in your post is "They don't all agree about the
emotions for the keys". That makes it sound like a blanket statement
about the emotion of a specific key would indeed be "hogwash". While
it is true that one person may experience it a certain way, that is
not useful as a character definition for keys.

Quite possibly, however, in the days of Mozart, and later, the
tunings used for keyboards would give a very different sonority to
various keys. While on today's equal-tempered piano all triads sound
pretty much the same, in the past some would have sounded quite
lovely while others would have been just bearable.

I wrongly believed for a long time that by the end of Bach's life
keyboards were equal tempered. (Well-tempered is not the same thing
as equal tempered.) A fascinating book, "Temperament" by Stuart
Isacoff, traces the centuries-long philosophical and religious
struggle against the supremely practical solution of equal
temperament. I'm not sure how early equal temperament became
ubiquitous, but there is apparently still some disagreement about the
preferences of early 19th century pianist/composers, even Chopin.

A brief passage from Isacoff's book: 'By 1681, a theorist named
Andreas Werckmeister had developed an irregular tuning system that
came to be known as "well temperament". In Werckmeister's well-
tempered tuning, certain keys were more in tune than others, but none
were so out of tune as to be unplayable. Therefore, as a musical
work moved from one key center to another, the shift would become
blatant: the more far-reaching the displacement, the more grating
the harmonies.'

Andy

On Mar 27, 2006, at 5:11 PM, Roger Hewitt wrote:

> Oh, dear Dan, your have gone down in my estimation. I experience no
> difference between any keys, but I have no perfect pitch. I know
> several people with perfect pitch, all of whom say that keys are
> different to them. They don't egree about the emaotions for the keys
> but they all experience differences unique to them. Synesthesia (no
> idea if that is the correct spelling) is scientifically proven fact -
> colours with taste, smells with emotions and so on all exist for some
> people rare but definite) and pitches or keys with emotive effects is
> the most common of all for a significant majority. Boo to you for
> dismissing it so cavalierly.
>
> Roger H
>
>
> --- dnleeson <dnleeson@-----.net> wrote:
>
>> My congratulations to Ed for being so right and so forceful in
>> his presentation on the nonsense of keys carrying inherent
>> emotions. It was a terrible idea when it got invented and it has
>> gotten no better over the years. For a while, everyone believed
>> that C major was "pacific" and F major was "calm" and F-sharp
>> major was for serious emotions, while A major was for emotions
>> "whose details are better not to be described," blah, blah, blah.
>> All of this was done from whole cloth without a single shred of
>> evidence to support such doo-doo.
>>
>> D major was the key for stentorian and heroic music. But when in
>> a performance of an aria with a high b or c, the tenor asked that
>> the musicians transpose down a tone, the piece wound up in the
>> "pacific" key, even though it was supposed to be "stentorian."
>>
>> The crap that musicians invent to support non-supportable ideas
>> stuns the imagination.
>>
>> Dan Leeson
>> DNLeeson@-----.net
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Lacy, Edwin [mailto:el2@-----.edu]
>> Sent: Monday, March 27, 2006 11:48 AM
>> To: klarinet@-----.org
>> Subject: RE: [kl] Re: Keys (from Let's get real)
>>
>>
>> <<<I, too, have heard the hogwash about F major being a "calm"
>> key, and
>> so
>> on. This ignores the rather serious problem of transposing
>> instruments. If the orchestra is in F major, then my Bb clarinet
>> is in
>> G major, my A clarinet would be in Ab major, the alto saxes would
>> be in
>> D, and despite continued research, science has not yet determined
>> which
>> key the french horns would be in.
>>
>> So, does that mean a clarinet playing in G is "calm"?>>>
>>
>> No, a Bb clarinet playing in its written key of G IS in the key
>> of F.
>>
>> We can call the matter of the character of various keys "hogwash"
>> if we
>> want to, but that doesn't negate the fact that some pretty
>> outstanding
>> musicians seem to have been able to associate various keys with
>> their
>> own distinguishing characteristics. I'm referring to such
>> musicians as
>> Mozart, Beethoven, etc., etc. The fact that any particular
>> individual
>> may not be able to hear these qualities, or that I may not be
>> able to do
>> so, does not constitute evidence that such a phenomenon does not
>> exist.
>>
>> Ed Lacy
>> University of Evansville
>>

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