(careful, it is about temperaments)

[Ric Brekne]

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!