Tuners & Tuning

War Manpower Boss McNutt does not consider piano tuning a war-essential industry. But in Alaska, where piano tuners are next to nonexistent, an obscure master of this peaceful craft is doing his not inconsiderable bit to help the war effort.

Last week Harry J. Baker was in Matanuska, while officers at army posts and naval bases throughout the territory clamored for his services. Wherever he goes, people stop him on the street, begging for appointments. Within the past month, traveling by PT boat, barge and sub chaser, he has ranged as far as Adak in the Aleutians.

Tuner Baker has been tuning pianos for 40 years--Alaskan pianos for eight. In such inaccessible outposts as Moose Pass, he charges as high as $25 a job. Many of the pianos he tunes are elegant relics of the Gold Rush. At Petersburg he recently ministered to a massive old model that had made music in '98 for Klondike Kate and Diamond Tooth Lil.

Ticks & Honks. Harry Baker is one of a band of some 3,000 U.S. craftsmen who struggle bravely and incessantly to keep 6,000,000 U.S. pianos in tune. They are steadily losing ground. Not only are the tuners hopelessly outnumbered by the pianos, but even their present numbers are dwindling. The younger generation prefers a livelier livelihood.

Because piano tuning is a craft requiring great patience, tuners are apt to be dignified men who take great pride in their workmanship. Most of them also pride themselves on a calm, philosophical attitude toward life. A tuner must be able to move smoothly from a honky-tonk where the proprietor is trying to do him out of his pay (average: $4 per tuning) to the studio of a professional musician who hovers around trying to tell him how to perform his highly technical job. He must preserve his equanimity while clocks tick, automobiles honk and children play with his tools. Working with intense concentration, he can rarely tune more than three or four pianos a day. Despite their calm, it is not surprising that piano tuners sometimes have nervous breakdowns.

Imperfect Perfection. Piano tuning is difficult mainly because the piano is an imperfect musical instrument. It does not possess enough keys to play all the notes in music. (One key, for example, must do for both F sharp and G flat.) The compromise by which piano strings are tuned to represent musical tones that are close in pitch, but not identical, involves a mathematical theory of Einsteinian complexity.* Practically, the problem is to put the piano systematically and artistically out of tune, by equalizing the tonal distances between the black & white keys. In getting each note of the piano just enough out of tune, the piano tuner cannot trust to any such simple measuring device as his own sense of pitch. Once he has tuned up middle C with the aid of a tuning fork, he hammers away at fourths and fifths. He listens not to pitch but to the frequency of minute oscillations known as "beats," produced by the conflict of vibrations when two notes are struck simultaneously. The struggle to bring these "beats" to the proper frequency is what breaks tuners' nerves.

The Masters. Scientific exactitude in tuning is expected of any hack, but there is a further area where taste, artistry and individuality are paramount. No two master tuners will tune a piano exactly alike, nor will any master tune a piano the same way for different occasions. A piano that is perfectly tuned and "regulated" (by fluffing up the felt hammers to soften tone) for a broadcasting studio will sound all wrong in Carnegie Hall. A piano that is to accompany a violin is adjusted differently from one that is to accompany a cello. A tuner with a sensitive personal touch will tune pianos differently for different pianists. Virtuosos such as Josef Hofmann and the late Sergei Rachmaninoff hire a favorite tuner's fulltime services. Perhaps the most famous piano tuner who ever lived was the late Eldon Joubert of Boston, who for 30 years was Paderewski's constant companion.

Piano tuning, like diamond cutting and bassoon playing, tends to run in families. Tuners require about nine months to learn the basic principles of their craft, at least three more years to become proficient. Curiously, few of them can play the piano.

*The theory known as "equal temperament" permits the tuning of a keyboard instrument so that it can be played in any key with equal facility. It was the inspiration for Johann Sebastian Bach's famous collection of 48 preludes and fugues in all major and minor keys: The Well-Tempered Clavichord.

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