LESSON VII.
THE STUDY AND PRACTICE OF PIANO TUNING.
Before commencing the systematic study of piano tuning, we want to impress the student with a few important facts that underlie the great principles of scale building and general details of the art.
If you have followed the suggestions, and thoroughly mastered the work up to this point you should now have some idea of the natural and artificial phenomena of musical tones; you should have a clear knowledge at least of the fundamental principles of harmony and the technical terms by which we designate intervals and their relation to each other; a knowledge of the general and specific construction of the different types of pianos and their actions, and the methods employed to put them in perfect working condition mechanically. This admitted, we are ready to consider the art of tuningone, the appreciation of which is in direct proportion to the understanding of it. Let us now view this art for a moment in its past, present and future phases.
You may be a little surprised at what we are about to tell you, but it is a fact, gleaned from long experience in traveling and observation, that many, verily, the majority of pretending tuners have not so much practical knowledge of a piano as you should now have. We have no doubt that you, if you have a musical ear, could, without further instruction, improve an instrument that was extremely out of tune. You could detect and improve a tone which you should find extremely sharp or flat; you could detect and improve a unison that might be badly out, and you might produce an entire scale in which none of the chords would be unbearably rasping. But this is not enough. You should aspire to perfection, and not stop short of it.
It may seem to us who are musicians with thorough knowledge of the simpler laws of music, that a scale of eight tones is a simple affair; simply a natural consequence; the inevitable arrangement; but a historical investigation will prove our mistake. We will not go into the complexities of musical history; suffice it to say that the wisest philosophers who lived prior to the fourteenth century had no idea of a scale like that we have at the present day.
In piano tuning, as in other arts, many theories and conjectures have been advanced regarding the end to be sought and the means by which to gain it. There must be a plana system by which to work. The question is: What plan will insure the most perfect results with the least amount of labor? In Piano Tuning, this plan is called the Temperament.
Webster defines the word thus: "A system of compromises in the tuning of pianofortes, organs," etc. Later on we will discuss fully what these compromises are, and why they exist; for it is in them that the tuner demonstrates his greatest skill, and to them that the piano owes its surpassing excellence as a musical instrument, and, consequently, its immense popularity. For the present, the term "temperament" may be considered as meaning the plan or pattern from which the tuner works.