Hi Ed.... The snip below caught my eye for a couple reasons. Just the other day I was in the practice room for the bass players here at UiB tuning the piano they use and I noticed hanging all over one wall all kinds of charts for various intervals in various temperament schemes. A couple weeks ago in a conversation with the violin instructor here he mentioned that his classes are all intonation aware. All in all it seems sometimes like of all the instrumentalists in the world it is the pianist that seems to be least conciously aware of the instrument she / he is playing. And it doesnt just deal with temperament alone. I find nearly all pianists have no idea about what a good regulation feels like. There few items that will cause a reaction... but not many. Dampers for example. I sometimes think you could remove the damper stop rail without most pianists reacting. Most often unless a key simply does not function or has very very slow repetion.... there is no reaction. Now I know many notice in some vague sense uneveness in the action... but they have no concept of functional explainations and can not relate their sensation effectively to the technician at all. There are a select few excellent pianists I know who can tell you exactly what they want and are even capable of correct diagnosis of some problems. I'm always impressed with these. They are the very obvious exception to the rule. My point is, Pianists today seem to be by and large concerned with one basic big picture.... and it hasnt anything at all to do with temperament, and precious little to do (at least directly) with voicing and regulation issues... not from their perspective anyways. They simply put their fingers on the key board and expect two things. The <<correct>> tone to come out (and that is as you point out a very liberal concept indeed), and volume. The overall tonal qualities inherent in the instrument itself also seem to be high on their list and in equally undefined fashion, which may explain to some degree the marked (for not to say astounding) preference for Steinways in concert situations. All in all... I would think that if pianists delved far more into the world of the piano as apparently many other instrumentalists do, we might have an entirely different picture out there... in many more ways then just temperament issues. Cheers RicB My data is primarily from usage today. I don't presume any artist is savvy about temperament because I have never found one that is. I think the majority of them are totally in the dark about the history of intonation since 1700 and will remain so until the actually hear the difference. I have repeatedly been told by pianists freshly introduced to WT that nobody has ever brought the subject up!
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