more on this t..AAHHHAAA!

[Tvak@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 10/19/01 2:27:27 PM, drwoodwind@hotmail.com writes:

<<  What an alternate temperament gives a composer or 
a pianist is like a painter's pallette;  more tone color to play with.  >>

OK.  Let me come clean.  I've been a professional pianist my whole life.  I 
have perfect pitch.  I have a Master's Degree in Music.  I am also a 
published composer with performance credits including the Chicago Symphony 
Orchestra.  (And yeah, I tune a couple of pianos now and then.)  So when 
people start talking about Chopin and the use of 
temperaments-other-than-equal, I thought I could speak with authority about 
it.  The use of other temperaments has always interested me, but I just 
didn't think it would work especially well for Chopin.

So I followed Ron Koval's offset chart for an Equal-Beating-Victorian 
temperament and tuned my Baldwin grand in EBVT (offsetting it from ET with my 
Cybertuner).  Now it was my first try, so I'm sure it wasn't perfect, but 
WOW, it was beautiful!  Chopin, too.  Chopin, especially!  I played for about 
an hour and was later getting to the store than I had hoped.  Every chord had 
more color and character than I'm used to hearing.   I always assumed that 
the chords farther from the tonal centers of C or G would be really out, but 
that wasn't true, at least with my experiment.  I played one piece that 
knocked me out when it modulated to another key.  It was like going into 
another world!  And isn't that what the composer would have wanted at that 
time?  I think so.

So I gotta take back my comments about the appropriateness of other 
temperaments in various situations.  I didn't know what I was talking about, 
and I still don't, so I'll shut up now.

Tom Sivak

P.S.
Sorry about the above post.  Pushed the wrong button and off it went before 
it was done.