source file: m1399.txt Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 07:24:03 -0400 Subject: TUNING digest 1398 From: Daniel Wolf Jessie Gay 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. However, the books have never mentioned what these mechanical difficultie= s are. Does anyone have any input on this question?' I may be entirely wrong about this, but I think that the generally heavier construction of the piano (esp. the tuning block and frame) made the instrument simply better able to hold a tuning over a longer period of time and thus shifted the responsibility for the tuning from the performer or instrument owner to professional piano tuners. While most musicians can learn to set a meantone or well temperament and learn quickly to correct a tuning before and during a rehearsal or performance, approximating an equal temperament is a specialist activity and cannot be done on the fly. Douglas Leedy speaks about 'invention being the mother of necessity' in this case: because the piano was able to hold a tuning in ET, it became necessary to tune it in ET. There are arguments about ET and the piano based upon the stretched intonation of the partials of the rigid piano wire. I have great trouble in supporting these arguments historically, however, because the early pianos were wired at a much lower tension than modern instruments and were considerably less stretched. (La Monte Young's _Well Tuned Piano_ = deliberately uses a lower tension to reduce, but not eliminate the stretching. The actual tuning he uses deviates considerably from just intonation when = measured but is instead a subjectively convincing approximation.) Daniel Wolf rankfurt =