"Historical Mindset"

[Daleboy]

Dear List,
         Having read a number of recent posts.....I just HAD to thro in my
cents worth on the Temperaments thing. I am a recent convert to the notion
that "the general public, whether players of listeners, can be taught to hear
the subtleties of intervals in Historical tunings"...........something our
ancestors discussed over tea and crumpets on a rainy day!
        I believe that the key lies in the effective preparation of the mind
set of the listening audience.... Preferably in an intimate setting with few
distractions and minimal numbers of participants. I witnessed the performance
of a pianist by the name of Enid Katahn (Ed Foote's Partner in the "Beethoven
in the Temperaments CD) in which she very gingerly went through a few brief
segments of the pieces to be played, thereby letting the audience experience
the subtleties in the tuning. She did this by letting them hear the
differences in various intervals...even small children were excited to be able
to hear the differences.
         I tuned the piano in a Young Temperament so the C major scale was
easy to compare to the sharps and minor passages.......the audience really
picked up on it quite easily. THEY ENJOYED IT IMMENSLY! Even the ones in the
audience with developed classical palates didn't realize that Beethoven's
"Moonlight Sonata" was such a dark piece of music.
         As far as the experiment that Jim Coleman performed.......perhaps the
results would have been very different if the participants had been a bit more
informed, eh?
Dale Whitehead, RPT
Franklin Piano Restorations