Joseph wrote:

> And ANOTHER final thought!
>
> It is useful to compare Bach's harmonic pallette in his keyboard works (and
> please don't think the parameters for WTC II are the same as for WTCI) with
> that of his cantatas.
>
> If Bach really was writing for equal temperament, it would look more like
> the cantatas, but even in these, which can be extraordinarily chromatic and
> free, there is evidence that he endeavored to stay with "better sounding"
> temperaments than ET.

Excepting where he specifically tells us [WTC], we simply do not know why Bach
chose the keys he chose.  No better than we know why he composed his op.1 in B
[= Bb] and gave the 1st movement ||:21:||: 38:|| measures.  The choice of key
may have had a similar symbolic value to that which my interpretation gives to
the above measure numbers.  I think the chance is very small that the choice of
key was related solely to sound.

> I think of the advice that the continuo player
> simply omit the third if it clasheth with the strings. Were it ET, that
> wouldn't be an issue. And yet his gravitating to the 'sweet' triads, even
> though the prelude or fugue might nominally be in four or five flats or
> sharps, is evident all through both volumes of the WTC.

Is it really true that the P&Fs w/ many ## move toward keys w/ fewer ## [rather
than the other direction] before returning to the tonic?  That would give them
a Very Different Harmonic Balance from what we observe in other works.  And if
this is really true, then we should also expect the P&Fs in many flats to move
much more emphatically, or much further, in the # direction;  this would also
make the normal subdominant confirmation of the authentic cadence problematic -
tho perhaps not to JSB.  Somebody has probably tabulated all those chords &
internal cadences:  does anybody here know a reference?

>
> I shut up.

Please don't!

Dale