Saddest O of the Week

[Les Smith]

On Fri, 16 Jan 1998, A440A wrote:

>     Kyle Gann, the reviewer who writes in the "Voice" is sold on temperaments,
> and he, like myself, sees a coming revolution in tuning.  We, as tuners, need
> to be the agents of this change.   

Sorry, Ed, I gotta disagree, There'e a revolution in the making all right,
but it's not in tuning. The acoustic piano has been dying a slow, steady,
agonizing death for a long time now. The process is irreversable. The old,
great pianos were silenced long ago. Those that remain today will inevi-
tably follow in their wake. It's not a metter of "IF", it's only a matter
of "When". Instead of wasting their time studying archaic temperaments,
techs today would be well-advised to start taking courses in electronics
so that they will be able to adapt to servicing not the instruments of the
future, but the ones that are already here, and to whom the future unmis-
takably belongs. 

In case anyone hasn't noticed, Classical music is dead. Turn on your
radio and scan the dial from one end of the AM band to the other and
then do the same with FM. Out of the hundred or so stations you are
able to pull in, how many of them play Classical music? None? Maybe
one? What percentage is that? Probably less than 1%. Unconvinced?
Pull out your cable tv guide. How many stations do you get? 50 is
about average. Multiply that times 24 hours in a day and you get 1200
hours of TV programming every day. Out of that 1200 hours every day,
how many of them are devoted to classical music programming? 12 hours
a day would equal 1%. Chances are you can't find ANY. Multiply 1200
times 30 and you get 36,000 hours of programming a month. If in that
time you can manage to find even a few fours of classical music pro-
gramming, you'll be lucky. 

Like a person who is brain-dead but technically survives by virtue of 
mechanical machines which give the APPEARANCE of life where none act-
ually exists, Classical music lingers on with the aid of Federal, State
and Local government subsidies, donations by private foundations, and
pleading, "hat-in-hand" fund drives. Without this misbegotten charity,
Classicasl music would have been dead and buried long ago. It simply
is unable to attract the kind of audiences and broad base of support
which is needed for it to pay its own way and survive on its own. Even
with continual financial aid, Orchestras are still running into serious
problems and either cutting back their seasons, closing their doors, or
merging with other, equally troubled orchestras in the naive belief that
somehow two sinking ships tied together will be able to float. Further,
while its true that Classical music still survives, or at least lingers        
on, at the University level, It, like much that goes on in the world of
Academia, has little or no relationship to what is actually going on in
the real world outside.

My personal opinion is that trying to push Historical temperaments--and
I assume that in the interest of historical accuracy, you also advocate
combining them with equally archaic pitches, too-- on a public already
apathetic to Classical music in general, will only serve to kill what
small vestiges of interest might remain. Consider the following scenario.
=========================================================================
It's early Sunday afternoon and the concert hall is empty and silent. On
the stage, bathed in spotlights, sits a Steinway concert grand. Suddenly
a diminutive, silver-hiared man appears from backstage and walks over to
the piano carrying a small leather bag. He's the piano tuner and, after
taking out the tools of his trade, he consults the program for that after-
noon's concert before starting to tune. Confirming that the first three
selections will be "sonatas" by Scarlatti, he commences tuning the piano
in a temperament and at a pitch historically accurate to the early 1700's
in Italy. When he's finished, all is in readiness for the concert.

At precisely 4:00, the pianist, sporting a signature bow-tie, walks out
onto the stage, and is greeted with a thunderous ovation by the now-pack-
ed hall. No an empty seat is to be found anywhere. Walking over to the
piano, the artist sits down, places his white handkerchief on the tuning
pins, and begins to play as only he can. While he's performing, no one
speaks, no one coughs, seemingly no one even breathes. When Horowitz
plays, the whole world stops to listen. As the last notes of the Scarlatti
fade away, the Carnagie Hall audience breaks into pandemonium. The Master
is in top form. Finally, when the applause finally subsides, the audience
quickly checks the program to see what's next. Scriabin! The etude in D#m
and the prelude in C#m. Expecting Horowitz to sit down and immediately
commence the Scriabin, they're puzzled when he walks off the stage. What's
happening? As a white-haired man walks over to the piano and beings retun-
ing it, they check their programs. "To bring out the sublime beauties of
the music", Franz Mohr will tune the piano before each selection in a tem-
perament and at a pitch historically appropriate to the time when the
piece was composed. Wow! That should be worth a small delay. How long can
it take to tune a piano anyway? Probably three, four minutes, tops, right?
Wrong. It seems to take forever, but at last Franz in finished and Horo-
witz returns. His playing, as before, is brilliant. Once again the ap-
plause is thunderous. Once again the audience looks forward in anticipa-
tion to the next piece on the program, The Schubert Impromptu in Gb. Once
again, however, there is a delay as Franz returns to retune the piano.
This time the audience is not so patient. A few of them even get up and
walk out. What is this crap, anyway. They came to hear Horowitz PLAY, not
some old guy tune.

The Schubert goes well, and is well-received by those who are still there
to hear it, but after it's finished, there's another delay AND an on-stage
argument! The next piece is Busoni's transcription of Bach's Toccata and
Fugue in Dm for organ. Horowitz and Franz are in a bitter debate as to
whether the piano should be tuned to a temperament and pitch appropriate
to Bach's time, or one appropriate to Busoni's. Finally Wanda comes out on
stage, slams her hand down on the piano , sliences both men and decides
the issue. When Wanda talks, even Horowitz and Franz listen. By the time
the piano is ready, over half the audience has gone. Some even get up and
leave while he's playing. So it goes until the final piece on the program,
Chopin's Gm Ballade. When Horowitz comes out there are only 6 people left
in the audience and all the time he is playing, they are talking amongst
themselves and paying no attention at all to him. There is no applause
when he finishes and he walks off-stage, stunned by what has happened.
Maybe it IS time to hang up his bow-tie.

When Horowitz is gone, Franz walks back on stage to bring the piano back
to it's original pitch and temperament and the six people in the front row
leap to their feet and greet him with applause, whistles and shouts of
"Bravo". For a minuet Franz is taken aback, but then he smiles and flashes
them the "Victory" sign, because now he understands. The six are not music
lovers, they didn't come to hear Horowitz play; They are PIANO TECHNICIANS
and they came to hear HIM TUNE! They finally leave after Franz signs auto-
graphs for them. When he returns to tuning the piano in the empty, silent
hall, Franz is still smiling. Only he knows that he recently renegotiated
his contract so that he is now paid not by the concert, but by the tuning!

Les Smith