---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment In a message dated 6/5/2004 4:39:34 PM Central Daylight Time, A440A@aol.com writes: It may depend on what we are defining as "color". Ed, That is a question. That is why I allowed for a subconscious sense of key function based on historic experience. However, I do hear a difference between C Maj. and D Maj. in ET. I would attribute this to slightly faster thirds in the latter than the former. Yes, relatively speaking everything is the same but with the tonic located further up the scale the key's tonic will have slightly fast beating tonic - mediant third. Additionally there is the factor of a slight brightening of pitches as the tonic moves up the keyboard. Add to this my lifetime experience with music from 1600 to the present and you may have all the pieces to my puzzle. But defining the color of blue when it refers to sound is a difficult thing to do. So until tight definitions of all the phenomenon are agreed upon we should explore the phenomenon in all of its permutations before invalidating someone's particular experience. I am sure temperament influenced compositional choices. In addition to temperament you have tradition. In the early stages of development musical notation didn't allow for key, if the idea of key was even present. Everything was written without a signature and musica ficta was added as needed or desired by the performer and later the composer. In the later Baroque period musical notation as we know it today became more or less standardized. If we were to remove Bach's Well Tempered Clavier from the mix, very little was written in any key more remote than a couple accidentals. I think the tradition of simple keys could also attribute an influence here, not to mention the simple fact that most music is written and played for amateurs and less remote keys are easier for the average person to read. Ask any teacher about the moans you hear when a student's piece has any more than a few accidentals! It is not until the very late Classical and early Romantic periods do you begin to see more remte keys, yet this is still long before ET is on the seen. That is why I asked Ron for a HT, so I could explore this music in a temperament more appropriate to its time. What surprised me was how well the 20th century music also sounded. Andrew ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/bc/4c/70/02/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
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