I have seldom had players comment directly about the temperament, unless, perhaps, I set up the situation to require a comment. More often, if I have done good work, they will just say "Wow, the piano sounds good!" They have said this when I changed the temperament from ET to WT, and also when I have changed it from WT to ET. Generally an extra pass over the octaves and unisons in mid-treble range is probably the best value-added tuning work I can give. I am still trying to articulate something about the sound of the modern piano, and the mode of listening with which we hear it. This performance by Lang Lang perhaps illustrates what I mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz_BlYlBi40 I realize his approach has been questioned, but I pick this because it is an extreme illustration. I don't think temperament subtleties have much to do with this music as he plays it. We are too caught up listening to other things: subtleties of voicing, timbre, resonance, dynamics, melodic shaping and...rubato... We just want the temperament to get out of the way and not distract from what he is doing. For full disclosure I should say that I was once a convinced Jorgensenian (even though I was aware of his logical eccentricities), and that over years of exploring, I've reached a different place. There was a time when I wanted pianos to be harpsichords, and wanted modern pianos to be fortepianos. Now I can tell the difference, and enjoy each in its own right. Thank you for humoring my struggle to have new ideas. I'll be gone for a week. Ed Sutton Fred wrote: > 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 >
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