Jon Murphy wrote:
> What are "distant keys"?
Keys that have few notes in common with the "home" key. A piece in C
major will typically modulate to G or F or minor, but gets far afield
if it drifts into A-flat or F-sharp, and in any equal temperament those
sections will sound dissonant and unsettled because the tuning, which
is designed for major thirds that are very close to to the "perfect"
5:4 frequency ratio of the overtone series (i.e E is 5/4 the frequency
of C) in the keys used most, creates thirds that are considerably
stretched and unsettled ("out of tune") in distant keys. Equal
temperament pretty much destroys this expressive effect. Most baroque
music is in one of the simpler keys (i.e. few sharps or flats in the
signature, and a piece in A-flat or F-sharp is unusual, and probably
intended to sound exotic. Those keys are inherently "remote" in non-ET.
Obviously, some of the other posters are convinced otherwise, and
believe that a passage in D-flat should sound pretty much like a
passage in C, which is what ET is for. The question is whether this is
an advantage because everything, on average, is better in tune
(although the vast bulk of the music is worse in tune, because ET
essentially makes the simpler keys less well in tune to make the
distant keys better in tune) or a denaturing of the music. The
question is not simple. We have a pretty good idea that Vincenzo
Galilei liked equal temperament, and when he wrote pieces in weird keys
(or more properly, in modes based on unusual semitones), he intended to
demonstrate that they sounded just as good (or bad) as pieces in simple
keys. Lute players don't play these pieces much, and somewhere in the
archives you'll find a pretty bad review of them from Stewart McCoy,
who points out that the pieces in unusual keys play like (and in some
cases are) just awkward transpositions of pieces originally written in
normal keys.
The point: to say that moveable chord shapes or excursions into F-sharp
major necessarily mean equal temperament is to assume the conclusion
that excursions into F-sharp major should sound more or less the same
as passages in C or G. This is a natural conclusion to assume if
you're raised on equal temperament. It doesn't necessarily mean the
conclusion is wrong, of course.
H
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