what's with the new temperaments

[A440A@aol.com]

Ric writes: 
<<  If you are truly interested in how ET was

tuned in  the 19th century you might be interested in the research

of Ellis, and the writings of Montal.  >>

Greetings, 
    I have been interested in the influence of Claude Montal.  If I remember 
correctly, his booklet "How to tune your own piano" was discovered, by 
accident, in a pile of manuscripts in the 1970's.  It had languished in near 
total obscurity for 140 years, but upon coming to light was taken as proof of 
some sort.  This makes me wonder just how influential it was.  
   
   Tuners simply don't change their tuning philosophy(much less their work 
habits) very fast.  This is true today, and I think, even more so in an 
earlier time in which communication and education were so limited.  Imagine 
the working tuner of 1830, practising what was an arcane art of harmonic 
decisions.  Was he going to put aside all that instinctive and traditional 
skill he had learned to begin a new system of measurement that would detune 
all intervals?  Hipkins, in his postion as an industry leader and instructor 
may have, but the rank and file tuners could be expected to continue their 
craft as taught.  The 'hand-me-down' nature of instruction by individuals 
doesn't lend itself to rapid changes and adoption of avante-garde ideas.  
     
    It seems that if Montal's procedures had been taken up by the tuners of 
the era, we would have heard him hailed as the hero of the musical world,for 
finally solving the puzzle.  Wouldn't his name would have entered the 
literature of the musical trade as surely as Columbus's did in history. Was a 
practical way to achieve ET not pursued for centuries before him?  
    However, it seems that nobody really had heard of him until his invention 
of the sostenuto mechanism.  So,  I believe it is fallacy to think that his 
temperament was widely used or accepted at the time of his publishing it.  If 
it had been, we would have heard a lot more about in the intervening century 
and a half before it came to light. 

Ed Foote RPT