Temperament, A pianist responds

Richard Brekne Richard.Brekne@grieg.uib.no
Wed, 12 Dec 2001 09:40:18 +0100


David Love wrote:
> 
> >Are we to believe that Beethoven was oblivious to the character of this
> > key?
> 
> I don't imagine that Beethoven wasn't aware of tuning.  But that's what was
> available.  Do you imagine if Beethoven could play his pieces on a modern
> concert grand that he would prefer the pianos of his day?
> 
> David Love


Another one of these point / counterpoints that keeps coming
round... interesting enough as it were. However, I would
like to point out that the actual question is both
unanswerable, and that each possible answer is equally
likely. 

Given humankind's' ofte times conservative nature it is
quite possible indeed that the big B would have thought the
modern piano and refined ET to represent musical puke. Or he
might be go absolutely crazy with joy at these new wondrous
musical tools... we simply will never know and its useless
to attempt to conjecture his response to this hypothetical
question and even more useless to use that conjected
response as part of an argumentation about temperament
choice relative to music of any given period.

And in any case... its way off the point of the discussion
any ways. The fact is that Beethoven WAS influenced by the
musicality of his time... Given that fact it is also nearly
unimaginable that he could have not consciously exploited
the available tonal palettes.

jmofon


-- 
Richard Brekne
RPT, N.P.T.F.
Bergen, Norway
mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no


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