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It is good that some kind of statement was made and some guidance was given. I think it would have been better yet if Bill’s fellow Guild members could have reined him in a bit, before the Forum Owner got involved.

With all due respect to you, Bernhard, this is not true and it shows that you really do not have any significant experience with non-ET's. Granted, it is what many people think. The spread of consonance and dissonance throughout the cycle of 5ths is an intended distribution.

I take the example of the use by one of my colleagues of the 7th Comma Meantone for romantic era music in particular. The so called "wolf" key of A flat is supposedly the "unusable" key but to those who know that temperament, it is exactly the opposite. It provides for a tremendous power and energy to that key which enhances greatly the music performed in that key. Dozens upon dozens of artists, many of whom have returned repeatedly have performed here using that temperament. There are dozens of CD's available. They often speak of the "magic" that has come to life in the music which they had never experienced before.

Wish you guys wouldn't always do so much fighting!

I think I'm getting taken for a ride by my technician/tuners!

Bill, i completely agree that this happened with the evolving use of UTs. But initially, it was seen as an unavoidable side effect.

Can you tell me one performer among string players or a university educating them, where a distinction is made to reach key coloring and use of wolf key A flat chords for example (Except playing along single notes together with a UT tuned keyboard instrument)?
The answer is no because they don´t need to, as they can always play pure, and that is what they prefer if they can.

And i agree with the offending character the thread name has.

Wish you guys wouldn't always do so much fighting!

[quote=Bernhard Stopper][quote=Bill
Why would these composers consistently choose those remote keys if there were not something there whose distinction they preferred?

I will take Dan's analogy to coffee to illustrate exactly what I believe. Dan says that if you order coffee, you expect one thing, something which is standard in North America. I have often interacted with visitors from France and I lived in France during my senior year at the university. I learned the language well and learned about the cultural differences between France and North America.

One thing French people consistently say when they visit the USA is how bad both the coffee and bread here are. I remember seeing a documentary on coffee on the History Channel. It said that for decades, the American public was sold bad coffee. There was really no alternative to it. Wherever you might buy coffee, there was only one kind. I recall my mother saying how bad restaurant coffee always was. It always had this certain taste that she did not like. At least at home, she could make better coffee in her percolator. The restaurants all made coffee the same way and all of the coffee distributed to restaurants was usually by only one distributor and only one kind of coffee. Coffee was coffee.

Americans came to accept that kind of coffee and like it for what it was. The same was true of bread. During my childhood, bread meant only one thing to me. It was what commercial bakeries produced in mass and sold to the public. There really wasn't any other choice or if there was at all, it was more expensive, so my mother never bought it and therefore, I never knew of it. All I had to do was to go to France to discover that both coffee and bread could be something entirely different from what I had known my whole life previously.

Sometime well after I had returned from living in France, the company Starbuck's, located in Seattle where the people love their coffee decided to offer its customers a choice. They quickly found that people were often willing to pay more for something that was not the usual coffee they had always known. Starbuck's business expanded rapidly. It grew to the point where there were Starbuck's coffee houses across the street from each other all over the USA.

Many other coffee houses also opened. They offered any and all kinds of variations. Even their standard coffee was not what coffee used to be. Where I live, there are now at least a dozen coffee houses, including two Starbuck's within walking distance. There are several brands. Each offers multiple possibilities as a coffee beverage. Any way you want it, they can make it. Each place has their own decor and each one wants you as a customer to feel that you are welcome and they have just what you like. Most customers choose something other than the standard brew. Any of those choices costs more than the standard but most people choose something other than the ordinary. That makes the business profitable. No such businesses used to exist but now they do and they employ people and pay taxes.

Mc Donald's used to only serve one kind of coffee and it was bad. Then, they tried offering "premium coffee" for a higher price along with their standard brew. So many people bought the premium coffee at the higher price and no longer chose the standard brew that Mc Donald's stopped offering the standard brew!

Gas station convenience stores also saw this trend and began to offer customers premium coffee. It all cost more but the people who bought coffee were glad to pay the higher price for something better.

Today at the supermarket where I shop and even at Wal Mart, you can still buy what used to be known as the only coffee there ever was and also the only kind of bread there ever was but you can also buy any number of alternatives. These businesses would not stock these many variations at higher prices unless a substantial number of people bought them! Retailers sell what people choose to buy.

It took a company like Starbuck's to take the initiative to offer the public something other than what they had previously. One distinction there is about a free market is that the consumer has a choice. I often see it written, "None of my customers ever asked for an HT". That is because they don't know that there is anything to ask for other than just one thing, a piano tuning. It is not really that they are expecting ET, they most often don't even know what ET is. They most often have been served previously a the bad "brew" of reverse well and not ET anyway.

Here, in Madison, Wisconsin, USA, it took the initiative and the foresight of two of my local colleagues to introduce and promote the concept of an alternative temperament in piano tuning. It was not me that started it. I resisted the idea initially and had the same notions about it that most technicians have. For me, it took hearing actual music played on a piano tuned that way to persuade me. Once I heard it, I was convinced of the value.

Today in my area, we have a situation analogous to the Starbuck's phenomenon. The alternatives to ET are known and are more popular and in far more demand than ET. People have "tasted" what we offer and are willing to pay more for it. Those of us who use non-ET's don't want any piano we tune to sound like any piano the ET tuners or the reverse well tuners tune. There may be people who just want the regular and they can get just the regular but when they call one of us, they get what we offer and it is not the regular, just like Starbuck's and all the other coffee houses and other places who serve coffee.

All of this was possible only through the mutual respect that local RPT's have for each other by association with PTG, bye the way. Had there been no PTG Chapter, had we not had meetings and presentations, it would have never happened. None of us would probably ever have known who Owen Jorgensen was. The ETD's we have today would not exist as they are now.

To know only one way to tune, to believe only in one way to tune and do that imperfectly while shutting out all other possibilities is to limit oneself needlessly and ultimately, it will be to one's detriment as others around sign on to the Starbuck's concept. Steinway has always been like that. I was told rather rudely by Ron Conners once in his distinct Brooklyn accent, "We respond to the artists, when the artists start asking for it, we'll do it". Well, that day has arrived. Steinway artist Peter Serkin now specifically requests the 1/7 comma meantone temperament. If he comes to where Peter who started this insulting thread lives and Peter scoffs at him, Peter Serkin will just find someone else.

After tuning a piano for André Michel-Schub (also a Steinway artist) for the Beethoven Emperor Concerto in 1990 in a well temperament, he was so thrilled with it, he asked for it in Los Angeles and was rudely told by the technician, "Forget it, you're getting ET!" That Steinway artist was forced to accept what he didn't want and what he didn't want was ET and that was now 20 years ago.

The time will come when these requests by high caliber artists will become more common. I have long seen that the motivation for resistance to non-ET's by many technicians is primarily that they will be forced to learn something new. The same motivation exists on this forum with regards to PTG and RPT. The greater the presence of both, the more intimidated they feel by both. Let's make a rule against even mentioning PTG or RPT just so we won't feel any pressure. That has not worked. I am not the only person who suggests to novice technicians that they seek membership in PTG and RPT status. I am not the only person who refers pianists to RPT's. I won't be banned from this forum for doing so. You can choose to either live it or live with it. PTG, RPT's and non-ET's are not going away.

Don't forget about today's composers. Today's composers composing on pianos tuned in ET still compose in different keys for the same reasons. Even in ET, each key provides a different feel and quality musically. Your intellect will say it can't be, but it is true.