double flanges -Reply

Horace Greeley hgreeley@leland.Stanford.EDU
Tue Sep 30 16:47 MDT 1997


Keith,

At 03:21 PM 9/30/97 -0700, you wrote:

>>Sorry to hear of your month long illness.  I hope that this particular
>>episode is a done deal.

Thanks very much for your kind thoughts.  The answer is that no one is
quite sure just yet; cervical abcessess seem to have a way of hanging around,
I'm told.  Anyway, I'm back to work - and, as you may imagine, making trouble,
as usual.

>>I wish to respond to parts of your post at your convenience:

Sure.

>>So, basically I am understanding you to say in this paragraph is that the
>>double flange action was a superior action because it lent itself to be a
>>more feeling, controllable action for the pianist, but that it can't really
>>be explained because its too subjective, and not a technical factor.

Yes, with the caveat that this is where folks like myself get into real 
trouble with (some) physicists; i.e., having done concert work for as long
as I have, I _know_ that different pianists can make the same piano sound
like very different instruments.  However, this is not to say that it is not
(potentially) identifiable as a technical factor (good phrase), rather that
we cannot _presently_ make such identification simply because we lack
(in my opinion) the appropriate level of scientific sophistication to do so.

>>This paragraph confuses me from your first paragraph by the fact that it
>>seems to imply the double flange action was made with the "for profit"
>>mentality (one screw, one flange vs two), which would take away from the
>>"superior action" concept.  Or did they just get lucky and get a superior
>>action in the process?

I don't see these as necessarily contradictory paragraphs.  I think, that
the "right"
answer (to the extent that there is "one" right answer) is basically your
last observation.
I don't think that it was necessarily luck, but it definitely was a very
happy aglomeration of experience of design and manufacturing economy.

>>Does this book explain in detail  the reasons for the "superior action"
>concept?

No, what it does do is help to put the relative glamour of the piano (which
is so marvelously
covered by Loesser in "Men, Women and Pianos") into the perspective of what
else
was going on in the world.  Things like protection specifically granted the
industry during
WWI, or the extreme (which is to say draconian) management of Steinway and
Baldwin
during the '30s, help to put the instrument, and, therefore, what we do
into to larger
perspective.  

I am unaware that there is any written literature to support my
unscientific claims.

>>>Does this help?  It's a continuing problem - the things which make a given
>>>instrument more
>>>or less "musical" are not always things which can be reasonably reductively
>>>analyzed.
>>
>>By this paragraph I am deducing there is not really an answer my original
>>question.
>>
>>Yes...no...maybe...never mind  :-)
>>

There!  You've got it!  The ultimate position of equivocation!

Actually, I think that "the answer", to the extent that there is one, lies
in forums
such as this where we can share the variety of experience which makes us
who we 
are.

Best.

Horace

Horace Greeley

Systems Analyst/Engineer
Controller's Office
Stanford University

email: hgreeley@leland.stanford.edu
voice mail: 650.725.906
fax: 650.725.8014


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