Option B

[Billbrpt@aol.com]

Dear List,
    I am enjoying the discussion on temperaments and realize that people have
strong opinions.  There are people in Madison who only tune ET and I respect
their beliefs on the subject as I do Jim Bryant's and Ralph Martin's.  There
was no implication made that Ralph has ever said anything to his customers
that was not sincere and done so with the integrity expected of an RPT.
    As I was tuning this morning, I thought of a few embellishments to my two
"options" which should not have been nor should be taken seriously.  The
following is meant to be tongue-in-cheek but serves to demonstrate how anyone
can use material which is basically factual to suit one's own purpose or
agenda.

Technician:  "I'll give you a choice in how you'd like your piano
 tuned:
  
 Option A:   A nice, normal, regular, well-tempered tuning.  It is the way all
of the European composers tuned from the time of Bach through the Victorian
era.  Bach even wrote two whole books of music to show how good this tuning
system is.  They are called the "Well-Tempered Clavier Music".  Have you heard
of it?
Customer:  Yes, I play some of that music myself.
Technician:    Each key you play in will have a distinct character.  At the
top of the cycle of  5ths,  you will hear smooth, gentle, quiet harmony.  In
the remote keys, you'll hear beautiful vibrant, singing tones, enhanced
leading tones.  When you play
 modern music such as jazz, you'll hear crisp clear harmonies.

Customer:  What is the other option?
Tech:  A method known as a "Historical Temperament".
Cust:  What is historical about it?"
Tech:  Well, along about the time when Russia was falling to the Communists,
the Titanic sank, the Hindenburg exploded and Al Capone and his mob were
running bootleg liquor and extorting money out of innocent businessmen, a
group of evil scientists conspired to practice their own kind of extortion by
inventing a method of tuning which they forced upon the general population to
satisfy their own lust for power.  These people weren't even musicians.  They
were people who were trying to define music "scientifically" and who
prescribed a certain irrational  frequency for each note of the scale. 
     A man named Dr. White wrote a book in which he published a table of those
frequencies.  He said that from now on, everyone who tunes a piano should do
it his way.  Being that the whole thing sounded so "scientific" and all, added
to the fact that this man was a "doctor", people believed in his method even
though it was very difficult to learn.   Later, a machine called the "Strobe
Tuner" was invented to help tuners get these frequencies exactly because it
was so difficult for them to do by ear.  It became common for tuners to buy
these "Strobe Tuners" because tuning in this new "scientific" way was thought
to be somehow better than the natural way that the ear hears so easily. 
Cust:  What will my piano sound like, tuned this way?
Tech: If I  tune your piano this way, none of the harmony you hear from your
traditional  and classical music will sound the way the composer intended.
Every chord you  play will be slightly "sour" and unfocused sounding.  There
will be no
 distinction between any of the keys.  They will all have that same,
undesirable sound.  There won't be any reason to modulate from one key to the
next because they will have all been homogenized into one slightly "sour" but
supposedly "scientific" arrangement.  The smooth, quiet harmony you expect to
hear in the top of the cycle of 5ths will have a "busy", nervous sound to it,
quite inappropriate, I'd say.  That beautiful "singing" tone you want to hear
when you play Chopin will be flattened and dulled over.  Your leading tones
won't lead so well either.
Cust:  My goodness!  Why would anyone want a piano tuned that way?
Tech:  Beats me, ma'am.  In all my years as a tuner, I've never had anyone,
concert pianist, church pianist, music teacher or general customer ever ask
for it.
Cust:  Then why even offer it?
Tech:  Well, they say we should inform the public that they do have a choice.
Cust:  But what kind of music would sound good in it?  
Tech:  That's a good question. It's called "Atonal" music.  Have you ever
heard of it?
Cust:  No, I don't think so.
Tech:  That's because it is rarely, if ever played.  It's really awful, in my
opinion.  It has no harmony, no melody, no good beat to it or anything.  Yet,
just like the Communists who wanted to make everyone in society "equal", as
they put it, these evil conspirators wanted all music in the future to be
"atonal".
Cust:  Thank God they didn't succeed!
Tech:  And God Bless America!  We need to be truly thankful that we live in a
country where freedom of the marketplace exists and these kinds of arbitrary
rules and methods can't be imposed on free thinking, free spirited people!
Cust: Yes!  God Bless America!  But how do you even know how to do this
Historical Temperament if you never actually do it in practice?
Tech:  Well, to become a member of PTG, you have to prove you can at least
approximate it.
Cust:  Why use that as a standard when no one ever wants it?
Tech:  Beats me.  I think they try to set an impossibly high standard just to
make sure that the tuners who get in are really good.  It takes three aural
tuners or one of those fancy modern electronic versions of the Strobe Tuner to
even establish what it is.  The tuner only has to get 80% of it right to
qualify.
Cust:  Then if you only need to approximate it, you're never really getting it
to begin with?
Tech:  Gee, I never thought of it that way before.
Cust:  What is this Historical Temperament called?
Tech:  The 11th Comma SYNtonic MEANtone.*
Cust:  Oh my!
Tech:  So what'll it be today, ma'am, option A, the regular well or option B,
the MEAN one?
Cust:  Oh, I don't think I'd EVER want that MEAN tuning!  I'll just take the
regular!

*An equivilant name for Equal Temperament

Bill Bremmer RPT
Madison, Wisconsin