[pianotech] Virgil

[Bruce Dornfeld]

Here is something that I wrote for the Partial Post, the newsletter of the
North Shore Chapter.  For those of you who don't know him or his teachings,
it's not altogether too late.  Much of his teaching is still there to be
found in the pages of our Journal and especially his booklet "New Techniques
for Superior Aural Tuning" published by the PTG Foundation and available
from the PTG home office.

 

Virgil Smith

By Bruce Dornfeld, RPT

 

Virgil Smith, RPT & M. Mus. passed away on Monday September 27 in the
morning.  He was in his nineties, ninety-two I believe.  He had been retired
from tuning for a number of years.  His tools had been auctioned and he
lived in a retirement home.  He was still sharp mentally until the end.  He
would occasionally come to chapter meetings when someone could pick him and
his wheel chair up.  He was always happy to talk tuning and voicing with the
technicians who would always find him for good advice.

 

Virgil taught piano and music theory at the college level for 40 years, the
last 32 with the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago.  He learned piano service
while teaching and continued to service pianos for 20 years after retiring
from the classroom.  He worked as the concert tuner for Orchestra Hall in
Chicago for several years.  He was much sought after by musicians who would
fly him to various parts of the US and Canada.

 

He was in his environment teaching technicians at all levels, from the local
chapters to regional seminars and the PTG Technical Institutes.  Virgil
wrote many articles for the Journal as well as the Wippenpost and the
Partial Post.  He was the aural tuner for the two "Tune Offs" that pitted
the best aural tuning against the best electronic tuning (by Jim Coleman,
Sr.).  Virgil was made an honorary member of the North Shore Chapter.  In
2002, he was honored with the Golden Hammer Award, PTG's highest award.
Other publications include Your Piano and Your Piano Technician, a book
published by Kjos in 1981.  In 2006, Keyboard Companion magazine published
"The Amazing Piano Sound" about ways that servicing and playing can produce
the best piano sound.  His booklet New Techniques For Superior Aural Tuning
was published by the PTG Foundation in 2005.  He has more recently written
two other books that may be published in the near future.

 

Virgil was very important to my work with pianos.  I first met him at a
Chicago Chapter meeting where he taught a class on Steinway Teflon action
centers.  This would have been in the very early 1980s.  I was lucky to take
one on one voicing classes with him a little later.  He had about three
students who each got a used grand piano to work on at the American Music
store in Niles.  After regulating, tuning and hammer reshaping, he led each
of us through the process until we got the most we could from those pianos.
He also gave me practical ideas for changing my business from tuning and
repair to a full service model.

 

Virgil was a very good teacher, very patient, warm, and generous.  He was a
musician first.  His ideas were expressed more often in musical terms than
in scientific ones.  This is the root cause of the difference of opinion
that some have with his teachings.  He work tirelessly to raise the
standards of tuning and voicing in Chicago and as far as his voice could be
heard.  He always encouraged us to make pianos sound their best, to work to
make our own skills the best, and to live a Christian life, to treat
everyone you meet the best you can.  Virgil, you will be missed here by so
many of us, but your work will outlive us all.  Rumors are already out there
that the harps in Heaven are sounding better already!

 

 

Bruce Dornfeld, RPT

 <mailto:bdornfeld at earthlink.net> bdornfeld at earthlink.net

North Shore Chapter

 

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