In a message dated 98-03-14 04:27:22 EST, you write: << Suppose Helmholtz and Theodore Steinway designed a piano around Equal Temperament. Would you still have a guestion about how to tune it ? Richard MooET >> I don't suppose that they did. Did Helmholtz ever meet Steinway? Is this simply fiction like Dracula meeting Frankenstein? Why are the breaks in a Steinway scale at the very places where one would have a wider half step such as in a Victorian Temperament (VT)? I think it is because the Steinway piano is a marvelous example of Victorian era technology and should be tuned that way, in a VT, to produce the most authentic sound. Even though the tuners of the period thought in terms of ET, their temperaments weren't really entirely equal. Those breaks in the scale are not coincidence. Helmholtz book belongs on the shelf along side Freud's, Darwin's, Karl Marx's and Mary Shelly's. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin
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