[CAUT] ET vs UET

[Fred Sturm]

On Apr 22, 2010, at 1:38 PM, Dennis Johnson wrote:

> If there is art at work here, then this bit is an example.  Are  
> players stopped because the majority of the audience may not pick up  
> all the subtleties of their interpretation?  Top chefs do not much  
> talk about the clever and subtle ingredients that go into their  
> work, but that makes the whole experience what it is.  I really  
> don't care much to the degree that my customers notice subtle  
> differences between my work and someone else.  Some know, most don't.


	I certainly don't mean to argue against the pursuit of "perfection"  
or "art" to the highest degree. And as a performer I am quite aware  
that the subtleties of much of what I do (and which years of effort  
has allowed me to do) are missed by most, yet am convinced that the  
totality of those details makes a profound difference. Maybe not to  
every audience member, but to some (at the very least, to me).
	But there are a couple things I am trying to get at. First and  
foremost, we need to distinguish between history and fantasy.  
Imagination is a great tool for recreating history, but it needs to be  
based quite thoroughly on facts, whatever bits and pieces we have (and  
all of them put together relating to the subject at hand). I can find  
no way to connect 20th century VT practice with the Victorian Era,  
other than Owen Jorgensen's fantasy. The facts simply aren't there.
	The second thing I would like to get at is a sense of parameters. We  
all know pianos are metal and wood, and what we aim at we never hit  
exactly. And it doesn't last. In the modern piano it lasts much better  
than in the early 19th century one, with a wooden framework. People  
are people, and ability levels, while varied between individuals to a  
remarkable degree, are pretty constant for the average. So there is  
always a margin of error, sometimes a large one. It is very useful to  
try to get at some way of defining what constitutes the margin of  
error within which the vast majority of people will say "that is a  
tuning recognizable as ET and a good one." A baseline. It is also very  
useful to step back and wonder what differences do actually register  
with the listener - the average listener, the acute listener, the one- 
of-a-kind listener. Best of all would be to find this out in a  
controlled, dispassionate way. What we choose to do beyond the  
baseline and why is a very individual thing.
	How many people (if any) will hear this particular subtlety I am  
trying to introduce? Can I even hear it myself, if I am dispassionate  
about it? This is the sort of question I ask of my own work, and I  
think it is a very useful thing to do. If nothing else, it keeps me  
grounded and lets me know where to spend my time (when I am not typing  
away at the computer <G>. As I have been doing a bit more than usual  
recently).

Regards,
Fred Sturm
fssturm at unm.edu
http://www.createculture.org/profile/FredSturm