Our retired Macedonian friend who tunes pianos is about to take his
certification exam and needs to practice first on at least one grand piano.
He will trade tuning of a grand piano for some other service, such as English
lessons for himself and his wife.  He also teaches piano, and his son is an
opera singer.  No uprights needed, he has plenty of practice on those.

22 responses total.

He should contact the Ann Arbor School for the Performing Arts,
at 995-4625.  They have a number of pianos, one being a
grand, and they all need tuning.  They may allow him to tune
the grand.  Don't know.  

I doubt there is anyone there who'd be willing to coach English
though.  He'll probably be fortunate to just find someone
willing to let him practice tuning on their grand.  Most
people are pretty protective of their instruments and seek out
folks with lots of experience and a good reputation.  To get
there you start by tuning church pianos for free.

Thanks, I will call for him (my English is better).  He has already practiced
on several pianos, including one in Miller Manor where he lives, and in an
international student apt. building (it had not been tuned since I lived there
in 1975).  He seems pretty good, has all sorts of tools, and has taught piano
for 40 years or so.  He would probably be happy to tune just for the practice,
but I was also trying to find them some social contacts, and this might work
out well.  Thanks again.

Speaking of church pianos, I know one that proabably needs tuning.
It's a small grand, possibly a "baby grand", not a full concert
grand.  We could do conversation stuff.  (FWIW, the church is on 
Newport Road just north of M-14)

We would have to check with the music director/keyboard player, of course, 
but I doubt that she would have any objections.   If this sounds promising 
contact me or Dave (davel), who is more likely to be on-line.  Our home phone 
is 439-3053.

Many thanks for the baby grand offer.  Yesterday we visited the tuner and they
had just decided to go back home to Macedonia for a two-month visit, after
learning that the tuning exam was put off until April.  I will contact you
some time in March for more info.  The School never returned my call
(remmers), but thanks anyway.  The tuner's wife is studying for her
citizenship examination and knows more than I do about presidents, the
constitution, and the declaration of independence, but needs a lot of help
with grammar and vocabulary.

Yes, please do get back with us.  Grace & I both would find language
conversation things pleasant (have done this in the past), & very likely
that piano will need tuning in a couple of months.

Our piano tuner friend hopes to come over soon and tune a piano that we just
accidentally acquired when Jim answered the phone at Kiwanis and they had to
drop it off the next morning.  Kiwanis does not accept pianos.  It is a very
short upright with 5 1/4 octaves, 2 1/4 below and 3 above middle C.  I have
been able to play Bach and Mozart on it, but Beethoven went two notes too low.
Can anyone tell me what sorts of keyboard instruments Bach and Mozart composed
for originally, and their octave span?  And when 5.2 octaves became too little
to play keyboard music?  How many different sizes have pianos been made in?

I'm not an expert on the history of keyboard instruments, but
I can tell you a little. Bach composed for the harpsichord and
clavichord. Both have narrower keyboards than the modern piano.
I know little about the clavichord, but there were several
different styles of harpsichord (Flemish, Italian, etc.) with
different ranges. I own a Flemish harpsichord; it has a 4.5
octave range. This is adequate for any Baroque and earlier
music I've tried. Italian harpsichords have a narrower range;
not sure what it is. I know it's not enough for all of Bach.

I believe that most of Mozart's keyboard work was intended for
the "fortepiano", a smaller and quieter precursor of the modern
"pianoforte". Not sure what the octave range is on fortepianos.

The standard modern piano has 88 keys, which is 7 octaves plus
a few notes. The piano you've acquired strikes me as distinctly
non-standard. What's the brand name? Any idea of its age and
pedigree?

(Bach and Mozart both also composed for the pipe organ.)

Otherwise, what John said is quite correct, AFAIK.  (And I think he knows
more about it than I do.)  In the Baroque era I think keyboard instruments
were not as standardized as pianos were for a long time.  (Today, with
electric instruments, we're seeing a *lot* more variation than there used to
be, I think.)

(I think I'd better shut up before I have to further qualify what I say.)

Keyboard instruments were very non-standardized back then. And if you 
had some keyboard music to play, you'd play it on whatever instrument 
happened to be available -- harpsichord, clavichord, whatever.  Bach's 
"Well-Tempered Clavier" series of preludes and fugues were composed with 
the clavichord in mind, I believe, but nowadays they are performed most 
often on the harpsichord. I'm sure that it was considered appropriate to 
do so back in the Baroque era too.

(Provided the instrument was tuned for the key in which the piece was 
written, of course. Tuning systems were different back then, and a 
harpsichord might need to be re-tuned to play a piece in a different 
key. The "well-tempered scale" -- in which the frequency ratio between 
adjacent half-tones is the same for all keys, so that you don't have to 
retune for a different key -- was a fairly new thing in Bach's time. He 
wrote his "Well-Tempered Clavier" with this in mind, and in fact the key 
signatures of the 24 preludes and fugues in the series move through the 
12 possiblities exactly twice. The idea was that on an instrument with 
well-tempered tuning, you could play through the entire series without 
retuning.)

There is no name or date anywhere on the outside of the piano.  There was a
manufacturer's name on the harp (the metal part) which we forgot - Whitcomb
or the like.  Maybe it was repainted at some point?  It is light-colored
plywood (the front panel) with black paint, and plastic keys, which might date
it to mid 20th century?  When were plastic keys and plywood first used on
pianos?  The one I learned on had chipped ivory keys.  37" with wheels.
When we get it tuned, would anyone like to play duets with me?  I have not
checked if Mozart's 4-hands stuff fits the keyboard, or Schubert, but I also
have things for keyboard and recorder or voice (Die Schone Mullerin).  At one
point I was playing with a Hungarian woman (to whom I was teaching Croatian)
who had a piano, and a woman with a viola da gamba, I played recorder.

Re 9:
        Actually, the well-tempered scale is *not* the same as the equal
temperament scale used today.  Well-temperament was somewhat of a
compromise between meantone temperament and the equal temperament system
that we use today.  In meantone temperament, certain keys were practical
to use and others weren't, since sharps and flats did not function
enharmonically and the distances between notes were not all the same.
However, each key had its own particular character which is no longer
present in modern equal temperament tuning.  Well-temperament is a system
that allows for all the keys to be played, enharmonic relationships
between sharps and flats, and it also did a pretty good job preserving the
characters of each key.  This is why Bach only wrote 15 Inventions and
Sinfonias but 24 Preludes and Fugues: the Inventions were for meantone
temperament and the Preludes were for well-temperament, hence the title of
his "Well-Tempered Clavier" pieces.  True equal temperament was not used
before 1885 and not commonly practiced before the 20th century.

Thanks, Jeffrey.  However many times I see that stuff, I never manage to
remember it ... but it's worth having spelled out.

Hermann Helmholtz, in his _Sensations of Tone_, the last German edition of
which was published in 1877, wrote "Modern musicians who, with rare
exception, have never heard any music executed except in equal
temperament, mostly make light of the inexactness of tempered intonation."
It is very clearly stated in the text that he means true equal temperament
when writing of it. Therefore, if equal temperament was essentially
universally used by 1877, coyote's date of 1885 cannot be correct. 

Yes, 1885 sounds late to me too. But I stand corrected on my earlier
response - well-temperament and equal-temperament are not quite the
same, although they have the common property that you can play in any
key.

Helmholtz makes no mention of "well-temperment", at least in
translation. He does say of the Bachs "The equal temperament came into use
in Germany before it was introduced into France. In the second volume of
Matheson's _Critica Musica_, which appeared in 1752, he metnions _Neidhard_
and _Werckmeister_ as the inventgors of this temperament. Sebastian Bach had
already used it for the clavichord, as we must conclude from Marpurg's report
of Kirnberger's assertion, that when he was a pupil of the elder Bach he had
been made to tune all the major Thirds too sharp. Sebastian's son, Emmanual,
who was a celebrated pianist, and published in 1753 a work of great authority
in its day 'on the true art of playing the clavier,' requires this instrument
to be always tuned in the equal temperament."

Is there another term for "well-temperament"? Helmholtz discusses temperament
at great length and identifies literally dozens of temperament schemes
(including ones based on other than 12 intervals in the octave), but in
translation does not use the term "well".

My source that gave the 1885 date tells where it got that information, if
anybody feels like looking it up.  (1885 does sound a bit late to me, too).
Here's the information, quoted:
"For further study of the historical temperaments, two books by Owen Jorgensen
are highly recommended: _Tuning the Historical Temperaments by Ear_, Northern
Michigan University Press, Marquette, 1977, and _TUNING/Containing/The
Perfection of Eighteenth Century Temperament/The Lost Art of Nineteenth
Century Temperament/and/The Science of Equal Temperament_, Michigan State
University Press, East Lansing, 1991.  Articles contained in the latter volume
convincingly prove that true _equal_ temperament was not practiced on pianos
before 1885, and was not commonly practiced on pianos before the 20th
century."

Make of that what you will, but if anybody would like to the the research,
I'd be interested in what you find.

Do well tempered keyboards sound good in a few select keys and not so good
in other keys?  And equal-tempered sound not so good in any key?
(Not that I can hear the difference).

The only answer to that is, it is subjective. It would require having
"absolute pitch" to hear any differences on true equal-temperament
instruments, but not all are. For example, the four strings of a violin
are always just tuned..at exact intervals of fifths. It is *played*,
however, with equal temperament, except when open strings are played
(which is not usual, since all the same notes except an open G can be
obtained by fingering).

In regard to your specific question, Helmholtz wrote:

"...But the question here mooted is, whether individual keys have an *absolute
character* of their own, independently of their relation to any other key.
    This is often asserted, but it is difficult to determine how much
truth the assertion contains, or even what it precisely means, because
probably a variety of different things are included under the term
*character*, and perhaps the amount of effect due to the particular
instrument employed has not been allowed for...... Musicians fully capable
of forming a judgement have also admitted to me, that no difference in the
character of the keys can be observed on the organ, for example." 

I read an article a few months back - in a magazine where my kids take piano
lessons, no idea how old the issue was - discussing tunings and the piano in
some detail.  The author had come to the point of having a piano tuned in a
non-equal (well? just?) temperament, for the purpose of playing pieces from
the 19th c.  I think 1885 was mentioned in that article.  The article was
thorough, well-written, & interesting, just BTW.

Quite a few years back, when I used to read some usenet groups, there were
discussions of tunings including some very detailed explanations of the
different ones, as well.  Probably again in the years since.  What comes to
mind is rec.music.classical, but it's been a long time.  There are probably
archives sitting around on the web somewhere.

In a translator's appendix to my English edition of Helmholtz, he
discusses The History of Equal Temperament. The earliest historical
advocacy of equal temperament was by Aristoxenus, a pupil of Aristotle. 
Mersenne in 1636 published a book giving the correct intervals for
equal temperament. However, even though adopted in Germany for instruments
by 1688, was not adopted in England in the manufacture of organs until
1852. These dates do not represent absolute divisions, of course, but
just significant transitions from just or meantone to equal temperament.
That England and Germany took nearly two centuries to come into accord
on the use of equal temperament explains in part their long discordance.

My little piano may not get tuned for a while, as JIm is planning to borrow
the Kiwanis truck and pick up a player piano with it for our friend to tune
and then give to Kiwanis to sell.  This sounds time consuming.

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