Greetings all,
A very interesting morning over at Vanderbilt. Earlier this year, I had
tuned pianos in three adjacent practise rooms for a comparison. In one, I
had good ol' ET, in another I had Jorgensen's extrapolation that we call the
Broadwood's Best, and in the third room, Thomas Young's ideas were made
manifest.
I was being interviewed by a student inre the effects of temperament, when
I asked him about the three practise rooms. He said, "Johnson, myself, and
two others are always fighting to get in the Young room", and he knew of
several others that have become very partial to the Victorian sounds of the
Broadwood. I asked about the ET room and he said that is always open,
because nobody wants to play that one! His comment was that it sounded
boring, now.
(These are three new Yamaha C 2 pianos). He wanted to know if there couldn't
be more unequal temperaments put in place, and I suggested that he make this
request to the head of the piano dept/ and or the Dean. He said that the
piano students would love to petition the dept. to add more temperaments, so
here we go!
In discussing this with a prof. I learn that the piano students are
suddenly asking new questions, and more importantly, playing with more
expression than they have previously. He wanted more info, but said to keep
up whatever I was doing, because the students were obviously more musical in
their playing. This is good news.
I got the impetus to do this from Charles Ball and Tom Seay(Mary? did
you say you were doing this too?), down in Texas, where they had a few rooms
in temperaments. I would like to encourage any caut to consider doing this.
I have my charts( from the "Six Degrees" CD), on each door with a one
paragraph description of the era of that particular tuning developement. If
anybody wants to use them for a like project, feel free to do so. I think
this is making a real positive difference,and the students are getting
enthused.
Regards,
Ed Foote RPT
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