source file: m1399.txt
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 15:20:17 EDT

Subject: piano "built in ET".

From: A440A <A440A@aol.com>

Jesse wrote:
>Several books I have read say that one of the largest reasons for the
>popularity of Equal Temperament in western music is that the most
>prominent piano manufacturers all decided to make pianos in ET, and that
>constructing a JI piano creates some serious mechanical difficulties.

     I am not sure that a piano is "built in ET".  Unlike the fretted
instruments, the piano can perform as well in one harmonic arrangement as
another.  
    If a JI piano means having keys that are not in the 7/5 arrangement, then
you have the costs of new keys, which in a retrofit job on a piano, such as a
"six-six" scheme, and can cost thousands of dollars.  If you need more keys to
the octave, I cannot begin to offer what the cost would be, but it is a
problem that has been attacked for hundreds of years.  
     The popularity of ET in Western music is due, (IMHO)  to the loss of
interest in tonality.  With renewed interest in tonality today, the
alternatives to ET are becoming more prevelant.  Computer-equipped keyboard
tuners, such as myself, now are having a lot easier time offering customers a
choice in temperament and the results are encouraging.  
Regards, 
Ed Foote 
Precision Piano Works
Nashville, Tn. 
http://www.airtime.co.uk/forte/history/edfoote.html