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Re: F_minor...
- To: f_minor@email.rutgers.edu
- Subject: Re: F_minor...
- From: Michael Arnowitt <arnowitt@sover.net>
- Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 11:52:29 -0500
- Comments: SoVerNet Verification (on pike.sover.net)default from pm0a24.mont.sover.net [209.198.93.152] 209.198.93.152Tue, 23 Feb 1999 11:45:32 -0500 (EST)
- Delivered-to: f_minor-og@email.rutgers.edu
- Sender: owner-f_minor@email.rutgers.edu
At 05:39 PM 2/22/99 -0700, jerry and judy <jerbidoc@zianet.com> wrote:
>
>I think this came out in an interview once, but I don't how serious he was.
>What is meant by a performer's favorite key? I play a lot and I don't have
>one. Maybe I should? Do listeners have favorite keys?
>
>...
>
>It makes sense for composers to be partial to certain keys, because of
>certain musical technicalities or even personal experiences with specific
>keys. Beethoven's use of Cm and Mozart's use of Gm and Dm was more of a
>saving or a reserving of these keys for certain characteristic works.
>
>
>Jerry
>
>
It's more than musical technicalities and past experience. I didn't even
know this myself until a couple of years ago -- and I've been a pianist for
30 years --, but it turns out that until about 1918 or so, keys really did
sound different, even on a piano.
A well-tempered tuning (as in Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier") is just a
tuning system that allows you to play reasonably well in tune in all keys --
but this doesn't mean it's all symmetrical; the distance from C to E, for
example, wasn't the same as from E to G#, even though they're both major thirds.
Today we use "equal temperament," where all half-steps, etc. are
mathematically equal, so now all keys are identical except for starting
pitch level. But back then a well-tempered tuned piano really would give
different keys different "colors." The tuning system was generally set up
so that simpler keys (C major, for example) would have purer, more
natural-sounding intervals. Keys with large numbers of sharps or flats were
spicier (think of some of the music in Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I - Eb
minor and Bb minor - intense music; it's no accident Bach set them in those
keys with lots of flats.) In some historical tunings I have heard, you can
really tell a difference between sharp keys and flat keys due to the
asymmetries of these "well-temperaments."
So it wasn't just Beethoven that associated C minor with stormy music - it
may have been inherent in the tuning system of his time. Music that was
"chromatic" (had more funky notes tuning-wise) - the word chromatic itself
comes from Greek "chroma," color. The different keys had different colors.
I have heard a piano tuner tell me of hearing a performance of Bach's WTC on
a historical tuning, and how it was an extraordinary eye-opener for him
about this music.
That aside, even on a modern piano with equal temperament many of us have
psychological leanings to certain keys. My favorite is A major.
Michael