> On Feb 28, 2017, at 8:13 PM, Ron Andrico <praelu...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > Sorry, but I simply can't accept the idea that the old ones couldn't > tell whether or not they were in tune.
I understood the earlier post to mean that they could tell, but lived with it, rather as we accept that 15 first violins will sometimes be shriekishly out of tune in high passages, and take comfort in knowing they won’t stay up there longuy. I’m not buying that either. Back in the earlier geological era that was my young adulthood, in the days before the Web and widespread cable television, I happened to catch a guest by appearance by Isaac Stern, a great violinist (famous enough to be on a network TV show) but historically uninformed (in both of those things, he was the Itzhak Perlman of the day), on a show hosted by Merv Griffin or Dick Cavett (who were both very famous and fairly bright). The host, in full-on interview mode, said something like, “I understand you can do something that Paganini could do: play in tune when your violin is out of tune." Stern answered simply, “They didn’t play in tune in those days.” Now you know why Beethoven went deaf. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
