Description
Book SynopsisA fully updated edition of the leading reference work on musical key characteristics during the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods. This is a revised second edition of Dr. Steblin's important work on key characteristics, first published in 1983 by UMI Research Press and re-issued by the University of Rochester Press in 1996. The revision has been limited to athorough correction and update of the material in the first edition, so as to not disrupt the content and organization, for which the book has been praised as a significant and noteworthy reference for both scholars and research students alike. The book discusses the extra-musical meanings associated with various musical keys by ancient Greek and medieval-renaissance theorists and in particular composers and writers on music in the Baroque, Classical,and early Romantic periods. Chapters focus on Mattheson's extensive key descriptions from 1713, the Rameau-Rousseau and Marpurg-Kirnberger controversies regarding unequal versus equal temperaments, and C.F.D. Schubart's influential list based on the sharp-flat [bright-dark] principle of key-distinctions. Rita Katherine Steblin is a world-renowned music scholar, living and working in Vienna.
Table of ContentsThe Ancient Greeks and the Doctrine of Ethos The Medieval-Renaissance Modes and Their Affects The Transition from Modality to Tonality: Early French Key Characteristics Johann Mattheson and the Early Eighteenth-Century German Approach to Key Characteristics Rameau and Rousseau: Equal Temperament versus Unequal Temperament Marpurg versus Kimberger: The Tuning Controversy in Germany Psychological Factors: The Sharp-Flat Principle Physical Factors: The Properties of Instruments Tradition and Key Characteristics in the Early Nineteenth Century
