even tone?

[Allen Wright]

Mike:

Sorry for my slow response to your thoughtful reply to my posting - I've
been out of town for a few days. Your original posting seems to have
generated a very interesting thread on the topics of ht's, old/new pianos,
and how composers have responded to different instruments. 

I'm personally a big fan of and very interested in old pianos and
reproductions of old pianos (we have several of both here at Oberlin, and a
faculty member -David Breitman - who's very engaged in and well-versed in
the subject. It's very clear to me now (as it wasn't before I worked with
fpo's and players) how pianists interpretations of music have to change in
pretty fundamental ways depending on the instrument at hand. I love to hear
earlier music played on early instruments. Obviously everyone's listening
context is being broadened, and I hope it continues to be. I say let's have
a wider variety of pianos! (Del, modern manufacturers, and the hard-working
builders of early instruments out there would agree with that, I'm sure). 

And let's also have more temperaments, if people want them and ask for them.
I've been surprised that the early music people I encounter here seem to be
only interested in their one or two favorite temperaments, even though now
that I have the Reyburn Cybertuner program I can easily offer them scads of
different choices even though I'm not an expert in historical temperaments
per se. 

Creativity is a funny thing to pin down or make predictive generalizations
about, and impossible to quantify. It would seem to me that composers would
write DIFFERENTLY with a different tuning - that seems obvious enough. I'd
have trouble believing that a composer would by definition not be able to
write as well because he/she was "restricted" to equal temperament, though.
Having done some amateur composing myself over the years I know that an
important part of the process involves eliminating 99.9% of the infinitude
of possibilities that exist on the blank page. Stravinsky even made a remark
about that once that I can't remember exactly, but was something about
knowing what not to put down on the page, having too many possibilites. So,
being restricted to simpler means is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact,
someone else here made a similar point (although with different intent) when
they said that the composer is "forced to be creative by the fact that
certain intervals aren't available for use in ht's" or words to that effect.

I'm glad people are talking about all this.

Regards,   Allen Wright