Re: Quicky about naming a chord

"Hans Aberg" <haberg_20080313@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:frm24r$npq$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> David Webber wrote:
>
>> In general there are good reasons for writing one enharmonic rather
than 
>> another, even in 12tet.
>>
>> The point I was making is that these reasons are *least* compelling for

>> diminished sevenths and augmented triads, which are rather special 
>> objects. The point about diminished and augmented chords (especially in

>> 12tet) is that their identity is rather ambiguous.
>
> If the scale is not 12-ET, so there is no enharmonic equivalence, then
the 
> inversions of an diminished 7th are no longer transpositions of each 
> other.

True, but irrelevant, as we were talking about 12tet.

And diminished 7ths became *far* more interesting after the ubiquitous use

of 12tet.    I am somehow *not* using sleep over wondering how a group of 
Elizabethan singers  managed to arrive at a Cdim7 chord

Gb Bbb C Eb

sing it in tune, and then reinterpret it as a Gbdim7

Gb Bbb Dbb Fbb

(working out the exact pitch of Fbb of course)  before continuing on to
the 
next harmony.    The point being that an awful lot of what you can do with

dim7 chords (like modulating to distant keys) comes into its own
essentially 
only in the wonderfully rich structure of 12 (enharmonically distinct ) 
keys, which is facilitated by 12tet.   When you talk about dim7 chords in 
other temperaments, you are basically changing the subject.

Dave
-- 
David Webber
Author of 'Mozart the Music Processor'
http://www.mozart.co.uk
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