Saddest O of the Week

[Kent Swafford]

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.   

I agree, and am very excited by this.  A few weeks ago, a customer of 
mine was nearly in tears as she described for me her interest in learning 
about non-equal tunings and her feeling that there was nowhere she could 
go to learn this subject.

Perhaps there is an opportunity here.  Piano technicians should represent 
themselves as the experts in tuning;  we need to claim this area as our 
own;  if we don't, others will.

I recently downloaded some files off the net that demonstrate non-equal 
tunings on common, standard GS synthesizers.  We could use such files and 
synths to demonstrate various tunings in classroom situations, changing 
tunings at the literal punch of a button with no lengthy piano or 
harpsichord retuning necessary.

Les Smith wrote:
>Sorry, Ed, I gotta disagree, There's 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 irreversible. The old,
>great pianos were silenced long ago. Those that remain today will inevi-
>tably follow in their wake. It's not a matter 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.

You know, when I first started tuning pianos, I remember the old guys 
saying that when _they_ were first starting, the old(er) guys told _them_ 
that there was no future in pianos.

I won't argue with you except to say this:

I once had the honor of meeting Aaron Copland.  During a conversation, he 
was challenged by a young composer who suggested that it was impossible 
to get a performance of a new composition unless you were a composer 
associated with a university.

Copland shrugged and said, "Oh, you paint such a negative picture!"

To what end do we paint such a negative picture?  We live in such a 
negative world;  perhaps we can imagine a better one, but if we dwell on 
the bad things, we may miss the good things.

Kent Swafford