Key Character and Key Statistics. Key character is determined by several factors. One is the complex aspect of keyboard tuning. The composers considered here strongly differ in their preference for A-Major. Exemplarily we will inspect the key character of this key and consider its impact on key preference. In mean tone tuning w.r.t. C, the wolf fifth g - e sounds very rough, since this fifth is 35.7 Cent higher than the just fifth (Meister (1991) p. 81 cited in Grönewald (2003)). Bach used Neidhardt’s tuning (Lindley, 2001). Even though in Neidhardt’s tuning the wolf is eliminated, Bach used A-Major and g-minor only in WTC. Bach’s avoidance of these keys could be due to the reminiscence that these keys would have sounded odd in a tuning with the wolf on a/g.

On the other hand A-Major was the favored key of Chopin. What did make Chopin prefer this key? Did A-Major have a special key character for Chopin? Lindley (2003) points out »the tradition of tender affects« for this key which may have appealed to Chopin’s character. Chopin used equal temperament. So all intervals relative to the tonic were the same for all Major keys. For Chopin the key character may have been influenced by 18th century keyboard tuning, that preceded equal temperament. In tunings common at time when »Clementi was flourishing and Beethoven was not yet deaf«, A-Major had characteristic differences to tunings of keys with none or only few accidentals, e. g. C-Major. First the Major third a-c in A-Major is stretched compared to c-e in C-Major, second the leading note - tonic step g-a is squeezed compared to b-c. Therefore this tuning endows A-Major with a more nervous character and C-Major with a more solid one. ²

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