John Musselwhite wrote: > >Finally, the evidence presented claiming that piano performance does improve > >over time is rare and subjective while the evidence of piano performance > >degradation over time is common and easily measurable. > > Its degradation is quite measurable and occurs much too fast in some > instruments for various reasons. I would venture to guess that most of the > reports of pianos improving with age are due to technical work over the > years on what might have been extremely average instruments to begin with, > not to anything magical happening to the soundboards or rims once they're > stable. > > John No one is talking about anything magical John. You point out yourself here that there are things we can identify already that fit into your concept of an instruments ability to "mature". And in this paragraph you define this maturation concept a bit differently then you did earlier, so now we have two things we are talking about. What happens to soundboards or rims or anything else in the piano over time relative to this maturation question, is pretty much an unknown. Sure sure... we know they get flater with time, we know that they can warp, cave in, break up, we also know they can be pretty much flawless in these regards. But more then anything else... we know that there is a change in how pianos sound over time, and that many many people like what they hear. Just because we dont really understand much about why this is so and what mechanisms could account for this in no way means we are dealing with magic. In fact it strikes me as more akin to exactly this magic to simply discount these without having any real explanations as to why we should. RicB -- Richard Brekne RPT, N.P.T.F. Bergen, Norway mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html
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