I came to learning piano in middle age and find Bartok’s Mikrokosmos a torture to both my ears and fingers! 
Which isn’t to say it has no pedagogical value, but I doubt I’ll ever listen to the pieces with pleasure. YMMV …
Is it the intention of the Kick Starter to record Bach’s ‘Well Tempered Clavier’ on a piano that is tuned to an unequal circulating temperament (if so, which Well Temperament is intended?), or will it be in modern Equal Temperament?
(I don’t have a KS account — tempted by this though).
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Bound sheet music for Mikrokosmos at least used to be easily available and reasonably priced; I too used it as exercises at one point. (I’ve never tried playing it on my current instrument… should, I suppose.) If I can find my copy I’ll post the publisher info.
Websearch found some PDFs. I won’t point to them because I have no idea what the copyright status would be, but you should be able to track them down if you’re interested.
Here you go: http://imslp.org/wiki/Mikrokosmos,Sz.107(Bartók,_Béla) just don’t play in my earshot, OK?
If it’s on IMLSP it’s in the Public Domain somewhere!
We don’t agree on all points, but thank you for the well-informed discussion, I’ve enjoyed it =)
We haven’t discussed the temperament with our piano technician yet, but it’s obviously a crucial question. A lot of the case studies of various tunings have been done on harpsichord. Do you have any examples of modern grands that have been tuned “for Bach”? I’d love to investigate them.
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Thank you. I wish you luck with your project - this is a case where I would be pleased to be proven wrong.
Not personally —that’s why it’s interesting. But there are videos on youtube of fortepianos tuned to unequal temperaments. Here’s an example of a technician who tunes to an 18th Century Well Temperament. Here is someone demonstrating the sound of classical pieces in different temperaments, unfortunately with a lot of distortion in the audio. So it can be done.
Personally I’ve only been able to investigate using temperament files applied to Pianoteq and comparing that to our Equal Temperament acoustic piano. To my ear Bach sounds better in a Well Temperament, but which one to choose then opens a whole other can of worms. I quite like this temperament, but obviously YMMV. I’d just like to hear you use a Well Temperament to bring out the key colour, which I believe Bach intended.
It’s maybe a shame that the midi performance is a stretch goal rather than a basic goal of the project as that gives more people the ability to experiment with the sound of different temperaments?
Anyway, thank you for replying. I’m off to contribute and keep my fingers crossed for the midi files as well.
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