Israel and Fred- Thank you! For a long time I've been struggling to put my thoughts and feelings about temperaments into words. I am so bored with the search for the one-and-only authoritative way to perform a piece of music. Why must we assume that Bach or Schubert tuned their instruments exactly the same way every time they tuned, even when they performed the same piece? We just don't know, but considering the genius evident in their available works, we would be foolish to assume they were not extremely sensitive to subtle tuning differences when they chose to be, and used them in clever ways. Did Bach intend a go-to-sleep meantone tuning for the Goldberg Variations? Performances of music--even bad performances--are very innocent. These are not life threatening questions. It's o.k. to be playful about temperaments, and not dogmatic. I've been following early music studies and practice since the 1960's, and feel this area of study has given much to contemporary music life, including a great willingness to take the score as the starting point of an adventure. I note that people such as Paul Poletti are reconsidering their understandings of 18th century temperament instructions, and look forward to their new thoughts. Curiousity, flexibility and a humble desire to serve the people who go on the stage are good qualities for a tuner to practice. Meanwhile, I can't decide which is the one-and-only way to tune my piano. I must have a character disorder... Ed Sutton Israel wrote: And I'll repeat again that, though I might quibble over some of the details, I still find Fred's approach to the issues of temperament the most refreshingly plausible approach that I've encountered in a long time in it's lack of dogmatism - whether of "historical" or "contemporary" nature. Israel Stein
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