List, I am sending out a newsletter from time to time to a mailing list of schools, churches and piano teachers. (Archive is at http://tuning.floydgadd.com/html/newsletters.html) I've just finished composing my August edition. In my next issue I would like to delve into the question of why it is desirable and important to tune a piano. In this case, I'm not exploring reasons that benefit the longevity of the piano itself. I'm looking for particularly apt statements that speak to such things as the capacity of the human spirit for beauty, the benefits of having a well trained ear, and so forth. Maybe the core question I'm really after is this: Why bother to attune ourselves to beauty? I think we live in an age where we have largely lost the capacity to talk about beauty. So much of the music and entertainment industry is driven by a pragmatic approach to success, where success is defined in terms of money, fame, power (political and otherwise) and self actualization. And much current thinking is driven by a cultural relativism the essentially pushes to deny any real possibility that beauty actually exists. I find that at times I need to deliberately read and think in this area just to keep my courage up. Some particularly helpful books for me (even if they don't tackle the topic head-on) have been: C. S. Lewis - An Experiment in Criticism - The Abolition of Man Ken Meyers - All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes Jason Harms - The Affections of the Heart in Art Abraham Kaplan - The Aesthetics of the Popular Arts (in The journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Spring 1966) What have you read that has particularly nourished your courage to pursue and promote beauty in a world where so many parents of piano students (and even some teachers) seem to have the attitude of "why bother?" (In our case, why bother to tune a piano?) Or maybe you've got some things just burning in your soul and you're ready for a soapbox. Here's your chance. Some of us are listening. Floyd Gadd Manitoba Chapter
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