what's with the new temperaments?(x post)

[A440A@aol.com]

Greetings, 
   Inre pianists not hearing that a tuning was not ET, I wrote: 

<< Hmm,  I would phrase it another way, ie,  Why should we tuners be
> concerned with exactness of tuning ET, at all?   But that is to miss the
> exciting part, which is, 'what can the tuner do to improve the art'?

 Richard  writes:
Yes... You seem to be more and more advocating that any exactness relative to 
ET
is unncessary, not hearable, a waste of time, and will not be stable for more
then an hour or so anyways.  yet somehow manage to turn the same 
argumentations
180 degrees around as being somehow points in favour of HT's. Personally I 
see a
problem in managing that trick. >>

    No, what I have said is that a one cent deviation from absolute ET is 
going to cause virtually no notice among pianists. This is the reason that I 
have never made an argument that ET is not obtainable.  I consider a 
temperament to be equal if no differences between keys can be found.  That 
doesn't mean they don't exist, but that they are below the point of "just 
noticeable difference".  If they are not detectable, are they important to 
the performer? I don't think so.   Mr. Ax is a very accomplished pianist, but 
I believe the lack of equality was not noticed by him as he played because it 
fell in line with the original composer's architecture.   
     I have never a pianist that could tell the difference between ET's that 
varyed by a cent, (I'm not talking about unisons or octaves).  The 
differences I am speaking of are between 6 cent thirds and 17 cent thirds in 
a WT.  The difference in deviation's size here is a huge difference in what 
we are talking about.   
   If you think a clinically perfect ET is has a different quality of sound 
from one in which there is a 1 cent error somewhere in the 12 notes, I will 
disagree.  And I will be glad to wait for you to find an artist that will 
tell the difference. 
   The well-temperaments don't have to have that exactness to produce their 
characters. Variety is their hallmark. For them, variety is a feature, not a 
bug.  However,  ET  is based on math and nothing more, so it is easy to 
measure a deviation.  That doesn't mean that the ear can perceive it.  If a 
tuner feels that an extra hour is justified to erase the last 1% of deviation 
from their ET, thats fine, but the value lies in that particular tuner's 
opinion of themselves, not the practical difference it will make in the way 
the piano sounds.  

>> As for your argumentation about why HT's sound "better"... this is built 
on some
pretty large assumptions about matters we will never have comfortably reliable
information on. << 

   Back up there Richard.  I never said that "HT's sound better".  I said 
that customers overwhelmingly prefer them.  After 10 years, and hundreds of 
customers,this is not an assumption, but rather, a demonstrated denominator.  
I am very comfortable with that. 
    It is also a fact, in my experience of 9 presentations to techs,  that 
technicians invariably prefer the WT over the ET in side by side comparisons. 
 There's always a few that prefer the ET, but they are an extreme minority, 
so far.  As far as non-tech audiences go, I have yet to present the 
comparison and find a  group to favor the ET.  In 10 years, I have had now, 6 
customers ask to go back to ET. They were all playing 20th century music, 
exclusively.  
   I am no longer speaking from assumptions, but from a growing body of 
evidence.  Others that have adopted well-tempering as their primary offering 
have had the same results, (Page, Bailey, etal)  As I said before, virtually 
all the resistance to using WT's has come from technicians.  This is 
interesting, but not threatening, since techs don't pay me for my tuning. (my 
tuning fees are not "competitive",either!)  

>>The degree to which music was ever written for any particular
kind of key colour is at best a speculative question. And again... to use your
own argumentations ... why should there have been ??? I mean obviously folks 
are
not capable of "hearing" much at all, or perhaps you aslo advocate the idea 
that
the musicians and audiences of 100 years ago had more highly developed musical
ears the modern ears are.<<

   Aha, that is a central point. Their composers certainly produced work that 
is still being played to exclusion of most of what came after. What modern 
music compares to Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Liszt, Schumann, 
Chopin?  Maybe Schoenberg? Weber or Ives or Cage?  There is no equivalence 
here, imho.  
   yes, I will certainly say I believe that the musicians and audiences of 
1800-1900 had a more highly developed musical sense than those of today!   I 
and others intend to change that, and the equal temperament is of no value in 
that pursuit, other than for comparison.  So far, ET is faring extremely 
poorly when placed side by side with the alternatives.  Just ask those other 
techs who do this routinely.  
Regards,  
       
Ed Foote RPT 
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html