> Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:53:46 -0500 "Jeff Tanner" <tannertuner at bellsouth.net> wrote: > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Israel Stein" <custos3 at comcast.net> > >> Actually, the exact opposite is true. CAUTs will never be able to convince >> anyone that the are professionals, experts, etc. deserving of higher pay >> and higher status if the remain "one-trick" ponies, doing the same thing >> over and over again. Rising professional status goes hand-in-hand with >> expanding one's knowledge base, variety of services offered and ability to >> knowledgeably discuss the options available - and offer advice. >> > > Israel, what I learned about this has been that increasing knowledge, skills > and abilities might result in some higher level of respect, but in the > employment system currently in place, there is no return on that investment > beyond simple admiration. One who is willing to pursue expanding his/her > skills base should be prepared to learn that that will simply result in > higher and higher expectations, with no guarantee of that translating into > higher earnings. > Jeff, Your assumption is that things will always stay the same. However there are folks now who are actively engaged in an long-term effort to change how our role in educational institutions is perceived, and how compensation is calculated. I don't want to start a whole new discussion of the PTG's CAUT promotion/certification project, we have been through that once already. But I firmly believe that if properly financed and executed, this effort will bear fruit once we are past the current fiscal downturn. Yes, this it is a long-range prospect, but I believe that it can work - and the knowledge/competence/skill associated with temperament options could be an additional weapon in the arsenal used to achieve this change. You may disagree, but I am sure that back when the nursing profession was pulling itself up from the role of bandage changers and bedpan emptiers to that of professional health-care providers by acquiring additional skills and knowledge - and turning them into a defined curriculum of training - there were many who thought like you. And the same can be said for every profession that pulled itself up from the nineteenth century model of unspecified practitioners of an amorphous set of ill-defined skills (where we still currently are firmly ensconced) to the role of trained professionals possessing a well-defined and ever expanding body of knowledge and skills, and compensated accordingly. But, of course, if enough people believe that it can't happen, then it won't... But then, you are entitled to your opinion... Israel Stein >> What I see above is the usual conceit of - well, I'll omit the adjectives. >> "My solution is the best possible solution". Or the conceit could be >> generational "We are the peak of development and what we do is the best >> possible approach to..." The basic idea behind this conceit is that things >> have now reached their peak - and will stay the same forever. >> > > No, Israel, not at all. My concern is that tuners begin to promote > themselves in the area of historical application of temperament knowledge, > when there obviously is no consensus on the matter among the academic > community. That is completely separate from having the ability to perform > or execute a tuning when requested, which I do not in any way oppose. I am > struggling to put into words what I am trying to convey. Someone posted > about having introduced their faculty to the idea of historical > temperaments, and that was the genesis of interest among that faculty. That > is lighting a spark, in my opinion, that we might wish we had never lit, > lest the fire get out of control and we be blamed later for being incorrect. > > Several years ago I attempted to be that spark at our university. > Thankfully, my interest was quickly thwarted by the faculty. "Stick to > equal," was what I was told. "We assumed it [the fortepiano] hadn't been > tuned," after I'd gone over it at least 4 times just before they came in to > rehearse. I had consulted our faculty member who would have been the most > informed on the subject, about which temperament would have been appropriate > for the Hadyn piece they were rehearsing. His area was historical > keyboards - harpsichord, fortepiano, clavichord, celeste, etc. But even he > couldn't tell you which temperament would have been appropriate, and his > knowledge was limited. He basically tuned "equal", or something close, when > he tuned, but temperament just wasn't a big thing for him. At pitch, with > good octaves and unisons seemed to be all he considered important. He did > occasionally do a presentation for a class demonstrating the difference in > temperaments, but the Baldwin SF was in roughly equal and the harpsichord > was probably tuned in something harsh like Valotti/Young (which, according > to what has been recently posted doesn't seem to have enjoyed widespread > use). There wasn't really time to do a good demonstration with only > fortepianos and harpsichords because time in the room was so limited. > > Dennis Johnson posted about billing oneself as a "master tuner" and becoming > informed on the subject. What I am saying is that it is impossible to > become ACCURATELY informed on the subject of historical appropriateness of > temperament. And by promoting something erroneously, that makes us more > incompetent than competent. From what I am reading and have read, very > little evidence exists on the subject of the application of different tuning > systems. All anyone can really do is guess at what was actually being done. > Expecting the piano tuner to be an expert in the subject of historical > appropriateness of tuning systems is expecting something that is apparently > not possible. We must be careful that we do not erroneously recreate > history by pretending to know which temperament Beethoven would have had on > his piano when he composed the Moonlight Sonata, for example. We don't. No > one does. And we can't find out. We can only speculate. (I actually > imagine his fortepiano being out of tune more often than not, more like a > practice room piano, and the composition happening inside his head, > regardless of what he was hearing on the instrument. Due to the climactic > instability of housing of the period, whatever temperaments would have been > used likely wouldn't have remain clean enough to be able to identify more > than an hour or so without needing to be retuned.) So, billing oneself as a > "Master Tuner" involves just as much yielding to the reality that we can't > possibly know everything as it does trying to pretend we can. > > Being able to perform something at a customer's request is entirely > different. But promoting the implementation of historical appropriateness > of temperaments is beyond the scope of the training of the piano > technician -- particularly at the level of compensation CAUTs receive. > > Jeff > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:20:26 -0600 > From: "rwest1 at unl.edu" <rwest1 at unl.edu> > Subject: Re: [CAUT] Claudio Di Veroli & Equal Temperament > To: caut at ptg.org > Message-ID: <3E5486AE-B5BB-4485-A440-877B1F6341CB at unl.edu> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed"; > DelSp="yes" > > I think you have a good point here. I've never tuned an unequal > temperament without first investigating what it's supposed to sound > like aurally. Going strictly by the numbers does not guarantee that > the numbers actually are correct or that the technician has produced > a correct temperament. Only by knowing, for example, that a > particular third is supposed to be 3 beats, or no beats does a person > know that the temperament is properly rendered. In other words, it > may look like a duck and it may walk like a duck, but it may not > sound like a duck. > > Richard West, quack tuner > > > On Jan 30, 2009, at 11:27 AM, David Love wrote: > > >> Learning to do them aurally does provide quite a challenge though >> and an ETD that offers HT programming is definitely a plus if not a >> must. >> >> David Love >> www.davidlovepianos.com >> >> >> > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090130/5aaa8055/attachment-0001.html> > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > CAUT mailing list > CAUT at ptg.org > http://ptg.org/mailman/listinfo/caut_ptg.org > > > End of CAUT Digest, Vol 3, Issue 60 > *********************************** > >
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