The New Client

The Equal Temperament

Chapter 25: The New Client

Every piano Clara had ever tuned for the first time had been a stranger, had been a body she did not know, a voice she had not heard, a system of tensions and resistances and resonances that she had to learn in the span of a single tuning, the way a doctor learns a new patient in the span of a single examination — listening, touching, assessing, building a picture from the information the instrument provided, the picture incomplete because a single encounter could not reveal what years of repeated encounters would reveal, the tendencies, the patterns, the ways the piano responded to the seasons, to use, to age, the personality that emerged only over time, the personality that Clara recorded in the notebook and carried in her memory and that constituted, after years, the intimacy that made her tuning of a specific piano different from any other tuner's tuning of that piano.

The new client was the woman from Lake Oswego, the one who had called in October, the one who had recently purchased a rebuilt Steinway A and who wanted a tuner who tuned by ear, who did not use an electronic device, who could hear the piano rather than just measure it, and Clara had made the appointment for a Tuesday in late March, the appointment she had agreed to when she said "I tune by ear" and heard the words differently than she had heard them every other time she had said them, and the appointment was today.

She drove south from Portland on Macadam Avenue, past the cemetery where Leonard was buried — she did not look toward the cemetery as she passed, did not acknowledge it, the cemetery a landmark she drove past twice a week without ceremony, the way you pass a familiar building without looking up — and into Lake Oswego, the suburb south of Portland where the houses were larger and the yards were wider and the pianos were, in Clara's experience, better maintained, the income level translating into more frequent tunings and more expensive instruments and a client base that was, on average, more discerning, more demanding, more likely to hear the difference between a tuning that was correct and a tuning that was exceptional.

The house was on a street that ended at the lake, and the house was new, or recently renovated, with large windows and clean lines and the architectural vocabulary of money that was aware of itself, and the woman who opened the door was approximately forty, tall, with the manner of a person who was accustomed to selecting things — furniture, art, wine, piano tuners — with deliberation.

"Clara Resnikoff," the woman said. "I'm Sarah Okada. Thank you for coming. The piano is in the music room."

The music room was a room that had been designed for music — acoustically treated, the walls lined with bookshelves that served as diffusers, the ceiling sloped to prevent flutter echoes, the floor hardwood, the proportions calculated to produce a reverb time of approximately 1.2 seconds, and in the center of the room stood the Steinway A, a six-foot-two grand in polished ebony, the lid open on the long stick, the keyboard exposed, and Clara entered the room and felt what she always felt when she encountered a piano for the first time — the particular alertness of the not-yet-known, the heightened attention that a new instrument demanded, the ear opening wider because the ear did not yet know what to expect, did not yet have the template, the baseline, the standard against which to compare what it heard.

Every other piano on Clara's list was a known quantity. The Yamaha U1 at the Huangs' was a piano she had tuned forty-eight times. The Bösendorfer was a piano she had tuned two hundred and sixty-four times. Each tuning of a known piano was a comparison — the current state compared to the previous state, the drift measured against the expectation, the correction guided by the knowledge of what the piano should sound like, what it had sounded like last month, last year, in every season and every condition. The known piano was a conversation in progress, a dialogue that had been running for years, each tuning a new sentence in an ongoing exchange.

The new piano was the beginning of a conversation. The first sentence. The first word. And Clara was going to have to speak the first word with an ear that was diminished in the upper frequencies, an ear that could not hear everything the piano had to say, an ear that would need to listen harder, lean closer, compensate more, because the compensations she had developed — the knowledge of each piano's tendencies, the memory of each piano's voice — these compensations did not exist for a piano she had never touched.

She stood beside the Steinway A and looked at it. The case was polished to a high gloss — the estate from which it came had maintained it meticulously, or the rebuilder had refinished it — and the interior was clean, the strings bright, the hammers new, the action rebuilt, the pin block replaced. This was a piano that had been taken apart and put back together, every worn component replaced, every aged surface restored, the instrument returned to something approaching its original condition, and the piano was, in a sense, young — younger than its serial number, younger than the date stamped on the frame, because the rebuild had given it a new life, new hammers and new strings and new felt and new everything except the soundboard and the frame and the rim, which were the piano's skeleton, its bones, the structure that defined its shape and its sound and that could not be replaced without replacing the piano itself.

Clara struck the fork.

The A bloomed in the music room. The room's acoustics received the sound and reflected it from the bookshelves and the sloped ceiling and the hardwood floor, and the reverb was clean, was even, was the result of the deliberate acoustic design, and Clara listened to the A decay through this new reverb and heard the room's signature, the particular character of this space, and she began the process of learning, the process of building the template from which all future tunings of this piano in this room would be derived.

She set the A. She seated the lever on the A4 pin and turned, and the pin responded — tightly, the new pinblock gripping the new pins with the firmness of fresh laminated maple, the resistance greater than on older pianos where the pin holes had expanded and the grip had loosened — and Clara felt the pin's resistance through the lever, through the rosewood handle, through her fingers, and the feeling was information, was data, was the piano telling her something about itself, about its condition, about how much force would be required, and Clara listened to this information with her hands the way she listened to the sound with her ears, the two channels of perception — tactile and auditory — contributing to the composite picture of the instrument.

The A came into tune. The three strings of the unison merged. The unison was — Clara listened with the attention she reserved for first encounters — the unison was good, was alive, the new strings vibrating with the energy and the clarity of strings that had not yet been stretched by years of use, that were still elastic, still responsive, still at the beginning of their working life, and the quality of the unison told Clara something about the rebuild, about the quality of the strings and the precision of the scaling and the condition of the bridge, the quality telling her that this was a well-rebuilt piano, a piano that had been restored by someone who knew what they were doing.

She began the temperament.

The temperament on a new piano was different from the temperament on a known piano, because on a known piano Clara had the template — the memory of what the intervals sounded like on this specific instrument, the specific beat rates that this piano's inharmonicity produced, the specific quality that each interval had in this specific room — and the template guided the tuning, the ear hearing the current state and comparing it to the remembered state and making adjustments based on the comparison. On a new piano there was no template. There was only the theory — the mathematical beat rates of equal temperament at the relevant pitch levels — and the ear, the ear that had to assess each interval without the benefit of prior experience, had to determine whether the fifth was narrow by the right amount and the third was wide by the right amount and the cross-checks passed, all without knowing what this piano's intervals were supposed to sound like, all without the context that years of listening to the same instrument provided.

Clara set the temperament. She worked slowly, more slowly than she usually worked, because the slowness was necessary — the ear needed more time with each interval, more repetitions of each strike, more seconds of listening to build the assessment that on a known piano would have been instantaneous. She tuned F3 to A3. The fourth. Wide, approximately one beat per second. She struck the interval and listened and counted — one beat, and a fraction, approximately 1.1 — and the rate was correct for equal temperament at this pitch level, and she moved to C4, tuning it as a fifth above F3, and the fifth was narrow, approximately 0.9 beats per second, and she checked the cross — F3 to C4 against C4 to A3 — and the cross passed, and she continued.

The temperament took twenty-five minutes, which was slow, was five minutes longer than her usual time on a known piano, and the extra five minutes were the cost of the newness, the premium charged by the absence of familiarity, and Clara was aware of the extra time, was aware that the newness was costing her not only time but also confidence — each judgment slightly less certain than it would have been on a known piano, each assessment slightly more provisional, each verdict slightly more qualified.

She tuned the octaves. The bass first, stretching downward, and the bass stretch was — this was where the lack of knowledge was most costly, because the stretch on a new piano was unknown, was a judgment that had to be made from scratch, the ear listening to each bass octave and determining how much to flatten, how far to extend the piano's range beyond the strict dictates of equal temperament, and the determination depended on the piano's inharmonicity, which depended on the string scaling, which depended on the string gauge and length and tension, and Clara did not know this piano's string scaling, had not tuned it before, had no template, and the stretch she applied was a first draft, an estimate, a judgment based on her general experience with Steinway A pianos and on what her ear told her about this specific piano's bass, and the judgment was — she checked each octave, listened to each one, assessed the cleanness — the judgment was adequate, was reasonable, was the judgment of a tuner who knew what bass octaves should sound like even if she did not know what this specific bass octave should sound like.

She turned to the treble. She tuned upward from the temperament, octave by octave, and the octaves were clean through C5, through C6, the ear hearing the intervals clearly, the judgment confident, the work flowing with the fluency that the mid-range still permitted. At C7 she slowed. Above C7 she was in the territory where the hearing was compromised, and on a known piano she would have supplemented the ear with the Korg, would have used the device to check what the ear could not confirm, and on this new piano she had the same option, had the Korg in the bag, could take it out and check and correct.

But Sarah Okada was in the room.

Sarah Okada was sitting in a chair in the corner of the music room, reading a book, or not reading, the book in her lap and her attention on Clara, watching the tuning the way some clients watched, with interest and with the particular pleasure of watching skilled work, and Sarah Okada had hired Clara because Clara tuned by ear, had specified this, had sought out a tuner who did not use an electronic device, and Clara was aware of Sarah Okada's attention, aware that taking out the Korg in this room, in front of this client who had specifically requested an aural tuner, would be a violation of the implicit contract, a disclosure of the limitation that Clara had not disclosed.

Clara leaned close. She leaned her ear toward the strings, closer than she would have preferred, closer than the practiced casualness of her usual posture, and she struck C-sharp 7 and C-sharp 6 together and listened. She heard the fundamentals. She heard the approximate relationship. She heard — she searched for the beats, searched for the pulsing that would tell her whether the octave was clean — she heard something, a quality rather than a count, a rightness or wrongness that was not measurable but was perceptible, and the quality was — she adjusted the pin, a fraction — the quality was better, and she struck again and listened and the quality was — right. Or close to right. Or as right as she could determine.

She continued up. Each note in the top octave tuned by this method — the method of quality rather than quantity, of feeling rather than counting, of the accumulated knowledge of twenty-eight years applied to a piano she had never touched — and the method produced results that were — Clara did not know. She did not know whether the top octave was correct. She could not verify by ear. She could not use the Korg without revealing the limitation to the client. She was, for the first time in months, tuning the top octave by ear alone, without the safety net, without the verification, the way she had tuned it before the hearing loss, the way she had tuned it when the ear was sufficient.

She finished the top octave. She tuned the unisons. She closed the lid and packed her tools and stood beside the piano and looked at Sarah Okada, who had closed her book and was looking at Clara with the expression of a person who had been watching something she valued and was ready to hear the result.

"Would you like to play," Clara said.

Sarah Okada sat at the bench and played — she played Schubert, the Impromptu in G-flat major, a piece that required a singing tone and a delicate touch and the kind of legato that tested the voicing as much as the tuning — and Clara stood by the window and listened to the Schubert and heard the tuning she had set, heard the temperament and the octaves and the unisons, and the tuning sounded — good. The intervals were clean. The bass was warm. The mid-range was balanced. The treble was — the treble was present, was clear enough, was not obviously wrong, but Clara could not assess it the way she could assess the bass and the mid-range, could not confirm its correctness by ear, could only hear it as a general quality rather than a specific measurement.

Sarah Okada finished the Schubert. She sat at the bench and looked at the keyboard and then at Clara.

"It sounds beautiful," she said. "The bass especially. The bass is — it feels like the piano has found its voice."

"The bass on a well-rebuilt Steinway A is one of the best sounds in the instrument world," Clara said. "This piano was rebuilt by someone who understood the scaling."

"Can you come monthly."

Clara looked at Sarah Okada. A new client. A new piano. A monthly relationship that would extend into the future, into the months when Clara's hearing would continue to decline, the months when the top octave would become more difficult, the months when the quality-not-quantity method would become less reliable.

"I can come monthly," Clara said, and as she said it she thought about what the commitment meant — not just the work, which she could do, but the relationship, which she was building, the first sentence of a conversation that she might not be able to continue, the beginning of an intimacy that she might not be able to maintain — and she thought about the difference between a new client and an existing client, the difference between building something and sustaining something, and she thought that she was building something she might have to give to Yuki, that this new piano, this Steinway A in Lake Oswego, might be the last piano she would add to the list before the list became Yuki's.

She drove home. She sat at the kitchen table. She took out the Korg and turned it on and struck the fork and pointed the Korg at the fork and the display showed A440, zero cents, correct. She turned off the Korg. She struck the fork again and listened with her ear — A440, clear, true, present — and the fork was the same pitch whether the Korg confirmed it or not, the confirmation unnecessary for the frequencies she could hear, the Korg needed only for the frequencies she could not.

She thought about the top octave of the Steinway A in Lake Oswego. She thought about the notes she had tuned by quality rather than by count, by feeling rather than by measurement, and she did not know whether they were correct. She would not know until next month, when she returned and struck the notes and heard — or did not hear — the deviations that a month of settling and playing might reveal. She would not know until the piano told her, in its own time, in its own voice, whether the first tuning had been right.

And next month she would bring the Korg. Next month, when the first-visit freshness had faded and the client relationship was established and the taking-out-of-the-Korg could be presented as routine rather than revelatory, she would check the top octave and learn what the ear could not tell her, and the learning would be — would be the next sentence in the conversation, the conversation between Clara and this new piano, the conversation that was just beginning and that might, if the hearing held, if the decline slowed, if the months were kind, continue for a while longer.

She put the Korg away. She struck the fork one more time.

A440. The first word. The reference from which all conversations began.

She set the fork on the table and went to bed.