more on this temperament thing

[A440A@AOL.COM]

Sorry for the double post, the first one went out on accident. 

When I wrote: '
<<Both Steinway artists here in Nashville have told me they are never going 
back to ET >>

Tom wrote:
>>I'm guessing that these artists are not playing Chopin in Nashville.  Could 
it be that the country tunes they play in Nashville are mostly in the keys of 
C, D, G, and A?  

    These two are classical artists, Marilyn Shields-Wiltsie and Enid Katahn. 
 They have nothing to do with the country tunes.  

Tom again: 
>>I would actually like to learn a non-equal temperament that favors the keys 
of C and G.  So many of the pianos I tune have young students who play the 
piano.  They would never play an Ab major triad.  
Would it be possible to use a temperament which would maximize the 
in-tuneness of all the white notes?  Is there an un-equal temperament that 
would serve this purpose?  

   Virtually ALL the well-temperaments "favor" the keys of C and G.  It is a 
characteristic of the genre that the keys with the fewest accidentals have 
the most consonant thirds, although these keys have more highly tempered 
fifths,(remember, thirds and fifths work in opposition).  There will be a few 
keys with near-14 cent tonic thirds, and a few with the full wazoo of a 
syntonic comma.  The Young has one, F#-A#,  the Broadwood's have none, etc.  
  Steve Fairchild promoted what was actually a Valotti temperament for just 
this clientele.  His rationale is, "Why compromise the keys that are used all 
the time just to make the ones that are NEVER used the same?"   If we are to 
attempt to provide the greatest amount of resonance and harmony from the 
instrument, we must reduce the dissonance.  That can be done in a variety of 
ways, however, one fact augers for the conventional well-temperament. That is 
that in any of the WT's,  the sum total of dissonance is reduced from ET, 
unless the piano is played in all keys equally.  This is not the normal 
distribution of key signature, however.  The keys with more than 4 
accidentals are played nowhere near as much as those with less.  This holds 
true especially for the consoles and spinets used by the millions of complete 
amatuers out there for whom music is a special and enjoyed activity.  Most of 
these players will never learn a piece if F#, so why compromise all those 
thirds that they do use, just to make sure F# is identical to everyone else?  
That is one reason to re-evaluate the exclusive use of ET.  
   I found it very interesting that Oleg tells us the Paris tuners are not 
using strict ET,  just the young ones!  I am sorta surprised, probably 
because of the heavy, and I do mean heavy, idealization of ET above all else 
that is very predominant in the American piano trade.   This  is slowly 
changing,  I can see that,  but the preponderance is there and it may make us 
erroneously think the rest of the world is doing the same thing.  
     I wonder what they are doing in Germany or Russia?  If I understand 
correctly, Steinway factory tuners are stretching their tunings into pure 
fifths by the 5th octave.  Is that a departure from perfect ET?  
Regards, 
Ed Foote