[CAUT] well-prepared piano Bunger 2nd ed

[mario at pianosinsideout.com]

I noticed he shows using a screwdriver to spread the strings to insert
screws and the like. 

Mario Igrec

-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Sturm [mailto:fssturm at unm.edu] 
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 2:18 PM
To: College & University Technicians
Subject: [CAUT] well-prepared piano Bunger 2nd ed

A couple weeks ago there was a thread that mentioned Richard Bunger Evans'
Well-Prepared Piano, a book explaining how to prepare pianos to perform
music of Cage and those who followed his lead. The first edition was
published in 1973, by the Colorado College Press. He produced a second
edition in 1981, published by Litoral Arts Press.  
The second edition has 94 pages compared to 45 of the first, so I got a copy
of the 2nd through interlibrary loan to see what the differences are.
	What I found was that the text of the first edition is re-set mostly
intact. The second edition is a smaller format, so its first 63 pages are
essentially exactly the same, with only three changes that I noticed in
skimming, nothing very significant. The remainder of the 2nd edition
contains three articles Bunger (he used his middle name early in his career)
published in Contemporary Keyboard Magazine, and an extended bibliography of
works using prepared piano techniques. So if you have or have access to the
first edition, you essentially have all you might need from him. The
articles are interesting, but don't add a lot of practical value.
	I'll note that Bunger is very meticulous about giving instructions
so as not to harm the piano (he misses a couple things here and there, like
pressing on the damper pedal before inserting things). I'll also note that
Alan Eder's video covers most of the territory in the book.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
fssturm at unm.edu
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination." -
Einstein