Review and oops,(Foote)

Greetings,
Sorry about all that bandwidth that I mirrored back to the list, I
don't know what happened to cause it, but I am sure that my fingers must have
discovered a hidden macro in the mail program....
I read the review of Enid Katahn's recording in "The New Republic". It
seems that the writer didn't really "get it" as far as what the tuning does.
She mentioned that there was "something' in a passage or two, but never
delved into the emotional level established by the pieces in the various
renditions.
What I don't understand is why a reviewer would write that Enid's playing
didn't sound like Horowitz's. Of course it doesn't, but so what? This
review segued from a book on "Solving the Puzzle" to a recording, and in so
doing, the reviewer segued from white-washing a partialy understood concept
to critiquing a performers rendition. And to choose the Chopin for
comparison! That was the only temperament we used on "6 Degrees" that I
specifically said was an avante-gard (as if bending Steinways around is
normal, these days) and shouldn't be taken as a standard anything.
What she also doesn't understand is that pianos don't "learn" ET,
and present a lot of problems when their temperaments are changed. That is
totally wrong. The major temperaments require no more than 6 or 8 cents
deviation on certain notes,some up, some down, from ET. This is far less
change than most pianos suffer from climate changes during the year. I
consistantly change temperaments on pianos and their stability is fine. The
remark about restringing after the Meantone failed to mention that those
piano strings had been on stage for 20 years, and were going to be restrung,
anyway.
As long as reviewers are looking for a particularly different tree, the
temperaments will remain an unseen forest. <sigh>
Regards,
Ed Foote
Nashville, Tn.

--- In tuning@y..., a440a@a... wrote:

/tuning/topicId_31604.html#31604

> What she also doesn't understand is that pianos
don't "learn" ET, and present a lot of problems when their
temperaments are changed. That is totally wrong. The major
temperaments require no more than 6 or 8 cents deviation on certain
notes,some up, some down, from ET. This is far less change than most
pianos suffer from climate changes during the year. I consistantly
change temperaments on pianos and their stability is fine.

Hi Ed!

As a *sometimes* piano tuner myself, I found this comment excessively
peculiar. I didn't realize that piano soundboards were
sentient "psychic" beings. Perhaps we should put them through grade
school... or at least "reform" school... Very strange.

The
> remark about restringing after the Meantone failed to mention that
those piano strings had been on stage for 20 years, and were going to
be restrung, anyway.

This really was such excessively bad information. It's kind of like
the people that think that any kind of "preparation" for a prepared
piano piece will ruin a piano for life...

Joe Pehrson