Re: Quicky about naming a chord

On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:59:01 -0400, "Tom K."
<tkorth1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>
>"Hans Aberg" <haberg_20080313@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
>news:frpied$fuq$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Tom K. wrote:
>>
>>> We're talking about 12 ET here, remember?   So F# and Gb sound the
same.
>>
>> Ah, sorry, I thought you were interested in the music before 12-ET -
you 
>> had some formulations giving that impression.
>>
>
>Well, is Bach's WTC before 12TET, that is are you differentiating between

>12TET and "Well Temperament"?  If so, how does the Urtext manage a D#
minor 
>Fugue where the Czerny Edition notates the very same fugue in Eb minor? 
And 
>hasn't (Western) piano music always assumed F#-Gb equivalency?

Bach wrote for well-tempering, which is not the same as equal
temperament, but which does sup****t all twelve keys. There was a lot
of debate in the latter part of the 1700s about retaining the
individual character of the well-tempered keys. Lester deals with 

Bach produced most of the preludes in the really remote keys by
transposing pieces he'd written in simpler keys.

F#-Gb "equivalency" is not necessarily an *identity* relation****p.
Some early keyboards had split black-note keys for notes 


>>> Again (assuming 12 ET):
>>>
>>> B (fully) dim. 7 functions as viio7 in the keys of C, Eb, F# or Gb, A 
>>> (major and minor)
>>>
>>> Or to put it another way:
>>> Bo7=Do7=Fo7=G#o7 and
>>> Co7=D#o7=F#o7=Ao7 and
>>> C#o7=Eo7=Go7=A#o7
>>>
>>> As all 12 possible roots and key centers are covered, there are only 3

>>> possible o7 chords, each one having 4 normal resolutions.
>>
>> If those keys are all harmonic minor, then I see it,
>
>There is no such thing as an "harmonic minor" key.  Minor keys use 9
tones 
>diatonically (^6 and ^7) are variable and 3 chromatically.  As composers 
>think in these terms, the 3 forms of the minor scale are merely
theoretical 
>abstractions.
>
>> but how is the dim7 fit into a major key, as you have written above?
>
>You're kidding, right?
>The fully diminished 7th has been freely employed in the major mode since

>the Baroque.  See, for example Prelude #1 in C major, WTC1, measure 14, 
>where Bach writes a fully diminished viio4/3 resolving to a (major) I in
bar 
>15; or the fully diminished viio7/V in measures 22 and 28;  or the Bb
major 
>viio7-I in bar 25 of Schubert's Erlkonig.
>
>Tom K. 
>