I learned tuning at the Perkins School in Elyria, Ohio, in the 70's. It was a unique place, an old YMCA full of pianos. There was a gym and a pool, and more dorm rooms that were ever needed. We learned to set temperaments by 4ths and 5ths. If you paid for the "concert tuning" course, you learned about 3rds. I don't recall 6ths being mentioned. Most of the good technicians from that school (and there are plenty on this list) ended up learning about the fine points of temperaments on their own. I lived in Elyria, but many of the students lived in the building. One day I was eating lunch with them in the big communal kitchen, and a woman named Sue went over to a diassembled upright in the hall and played some chords. I remember her exclaiming "Sweet!", and I remember all of us raising our heads and cocking an ear in that direction. She played some more, high, low, close, open, and it really was an uncommonly attractive sound, clear on some chords, complex on others. We all noticed it. Upon checking the temperament, it became clear that it wasn't perfect (ET being what we called perfect). Twenty years later, I realize that what we were hearing was a piano which a student had tuned in our approximation of ET, but which had slipped into a not-ET well temperament of some mongrel variety. We were so used to hearing one temperament, hour after hour, that a different temperament seemed like a doorway to different music. And that is how I regard temperaments now. I always attempt ET, because even for our Bach festival, that is what is specified. (We have an excellent harpsichordist who requests Valotti-Young at A 415 for her personal teaching harpsichord, but other than her, our very correct Bach experts here are completely unaccustomed to other temperaments.) At home, though, and on the pianos of some teachers who I know play almost exclusively Romantic repertoirs, I tune various temperaments, and savor the results like you would savor a fine meal. There are always lovely surprises in store, and sour chords happen, but only very, very rarely. It's amazing how broad a range our ears will accept. I do know that when I set ET on a piano using a temperament strip, where the piano is pretty out-of-tune, and then tune the unisons, when I check the temperament, it often no longer is ET. I suppose those of you who always do two-pass tunings would eliminate this "problem", but I find most people don't care, and the results are interesting and not at all offensive. When you're talking about temperaments, there are many paths to beauty. The older I get, the more I am willing to accept and appreciate any reasonable temperament that comes along. That applies to piano temperaments, and people temperaments. When I was working at the Perkins School painting walls, I once jokingly said that I was going to paint a mural of Moses receiving the Equal Temperament on Mt. Sinai. 20 years later, I know more than ever that that is only a joke. Mark Graham Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music Berea, Ohio
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC