The Comma

The Equal Temperament

Chapter 33: The Comma

The Pythagorean comma is the discrepancy that makes equal temperament necessary. If you tune twelve perfect fifths upward from a starting note — C to G to D to A to E and so on, around the full circle of fifths, twelve fifths in succession — you do not arrive back at the note you started from. You arrive at a note that is slightly sharp, approximately twenty-four cents above the starting C, and this discrepancy, this gap, this sliver of frequency that should not exist but does, is the Pythagorean comma, the mathematical proof that the circle of fifths is not a circle but a spiral, that the fifths do not close, that the octave and the fifth are incommensurable, that no system of tuning can make all the intervals pure because purity in one place requires impurity in another, and this fundamental impossibility — this crack at the foundation of Western music — is what equal temperament resolves, not by eliminating the comma but by distributing it, by dividing the twenty-four cents equally among the twelve fifths, each fifth narrowed by two cents, each fifth equally impure, the impurity shared, the compromise universal.

Clara had been thinking about the comma for months. Not the mathematical comma, which she had understood for decades, but the experiential comma — the discrepancy between what she expected to feel after stopping and what she actually felt, the gap between the anticipated silence and the actual silence, the difference between the imagined end and the lived end, and the difference was — was a comma, was a small but real deviation from what the theory predicted.

The theory had predicted emptiness. The theory — Clara's theory, the theory she had constructed during the months of the last round, during the farewells and the packing and the passing of the lever — the theory had predicted that stopping would feel like a silence after a concert, like the hall after the audience leaves, like the piano after the last note, the theory predicting that the absence of the work would be the dominant experience, the loss the primary sensation, and the theory was not wrong exactly but was incomplete, was the theoretical prediction that the real experience deviated from, the way real fifths deviate from pure fifths, the real slightly different from the ideal.

The real was this: Clara missed the pianos. She missed the lever on the pins. She missed the drive through the city, the entering of the houses, the opening of the lids, the first sound of the fork in each room. She missed the physical rhythm — the carrying, the setting, the opening, the tuning, the closing, the carrying — and the rhythm's absence was felt in the body, was a kind of phantom limb, the body reaching for the bag on mornings when the bag was not on the chair, the hands missing the lever on days when the lever was in Yuki's bag.

But the real was also this: Clara heard differently. She heard differently because she was no longer listening for the purpose of correction. For twenty-eight years Clara had listened to pianos with the intention of fixing them, had listened the way a doctor listens to a heartbeat — diagnostically, analytically, the listening oriented toward the detection of the wrong — and the diagnostic listening was a mode, a filter, a way of organizing the sound into categories of correct and incorrect, and the mode was so deeply habitual that Clara had not known it was a mode, had not known that there was another way to listen, had believed that her listening was simply listening, was the way all listening worked.

It was not. There was another way. And the other way was what Clara was learning, slowly, in the months after stopping, in the winter that followed the passing of the lever, in the spring that followed the winter.

It was April now. Clara was sitting in the living room of Mrs. Ashford's house on Klickitat Street, sitting in the chair by the window, the chair where Clara usually sat during the tuning, the chair that was the tuner's chair, and Yuki was at the Bösendorfer. Yuki was tuning the Bösendorfer.

Clara had come at Mrs. Ashford's invitation. Mrs. Ashford had called in March and had said, "I would like you to come when Yuki tunes. Not to supervise. Not to check. To listen. I think you should hear the piano from this side," and Clara had understood what Mrs. Ashford meant by "this side" — the listener's side, the audience's side, the side that heard the tuning not as a process to be managed but as a sound to be received — and Clara had said yes, had agreed to come, had agreed although the agreeing required a willingness to sit in the room where she had tuned for twenty-two years and watch someone else do the work and hear someone else's ear making the decisions that Clara's ear used to make.

Yuki had arrived at ten. She had knocked — Clara noticed that Yuki knocked the way Clara knocked, three quick raps, the rhythm of the knock transmitted from teacher to student like a gene, unconscious, inherited — and Mrs. Ashford had opened the door and Yuki had entered with the bag, the bag, Leonard's bag, Clara's bag, now Yuki's bag, the canvas worn and the compartments familiar and the lever in its sleeve, the lever with the rosewood handle, and Yuki had set the bag on the floor beside the Bösendorfer and had opened it and had taken out the fork — not Clara's fork, Yuki's fork, the Wittner — and had struck it.

A440. In Mrs. Ashford's living room. The sound that Clara had heard in this room two hundred and sixty-four times. The sound that was the beginning of every tuning, the reference, the starting point, and the sound was the same — was A440, was 440 hertz, was the pitch that did not change — but the sound was also different, was different because it came from a different fork struck by a different hand and heard from a different position in the room, Clara in the chair rather than at the bench, Clara receiving the sound rather than producing it, Clara listening rather than tuning.

Yuki set the A. Clara watched the lever in Yuki's hand — the rosewood handle, Leonard's handle, the handle shaped on the lathe in the garage on Ankeny — and Yuki's hand on the handle was different from Clara's hand, was smaller, the grip slightly different, the angle of the wrist slightly different, but the lever turned the pin the same way Clara's lever had turned the pin, the physics the same, the mechanism the same, and the A came into tune and the three strings merged and the unison locked and the lock was audible from the chair by the window, was audible across the room, the clean unison carrying through the air of Mrs. Ashford's living room with the clarity that this room's acoustics provided, the plaster walls and the hardwood floor and the high ceiling receiving the sound and returning it.

Yuki began the temperament.

Clara listened. She listened from the chair. She listened the way the audience listens at a concert — passively, receptively, the sound arriving rather than being sought, the ear open rather than directed — and the listening was different from the listening she had done for twenty-eight years, was fundamentally different, because the diagnostic filter was absent. Clara was not listening for errors. Clara was not listening for beats that were too fast or too slow, for intervals that were too wide or too narrow, for the deviations that the tuner's ear was trained to detect. Clara was listening to the sound.

The sound of the Bösendorfer being tuned was — Clara had never heard it from this position, from this distance, from this angle. She had heard it from the bench, from two feet away, from the position of the worker, and from that position the sound was raw, was direct, was the unmediated signal that the tuner needed for the work. From the chair by the window, fifteen feet away, the sound was different. The sound was processed — not by a device but by the room, by the air, by the distance, the sound traveling from the strings through the air and bouncing off the walls and the ceiling and the floor and arriving at Clara's ears as a complex, reverberant signal that was not the raw signal of the bench but the musical signal of the room, the sound that Mrs. Ashford heard when Yuki tuned, the sound that the listener heard, and the sound was — beautiful.

Clara had not thought of tuning as beautiful before. She had thought of tuning as correct or incorrect, as clean or dirty, as right or wrong, the binary categories of the professional, but the sound of Yuki tuning the Bösendorfer from the distance of the listener's chair was beautiful in a way that correctness did not capture, was beautiful in the way that the process of becoming was beautiful — the piano moving from its detuned state toward its tuned state, the intervals tightening, the temperament forming, the grid assembling, and the assembling was audible as a kind of narrative, a story told in sound, the story of disorder becoming order, of noise becoming music, of the wrong becoming right.

Yuki worked through the temperament. Clara heard the fourths and the fifths being set, heard the intervals checked and cross-checked, heard the occasional re-strike when Yuki was not satisfied, the lever adjusting, the pin turning, the correction applied, and the sounds were familiar — were the sounds Clara had made for twenty-eight years — but heard from this new position the sounds were also new, were heard as if for the first time, the way a word you have used your whole life sounds new when you hear it in someone else's mouth.

The temperament was clean. Clara could hear it from the chair. The intervals were correct, the beat rates consistent, the grid even, and Clara felt — pride. Not the pride of ownership, not the pride of a person who had done the work, but the pride of a teacher who hears the student performing the work correctly, the pride that is mixed with the knowledge that the student's competence means the teacher is no longer needed, and the mixture was the comma, was the discrepancy, the small gap between pride and loss, between satisfaction and grief.

Yuki tuned the bass. Clara heard the bass from the chair and the bass was — the bass was good. The bass was warm and deep and the stretch was correct and the octaves sang, Leonard's bass, the sound of a room with no windows, and Yuki was producing it, Yuki's ear was hearing it, Yuki's hands were making it, and the making was — correct. Was faithful. Was the continuation of the tradition, the lineage, the ear that had passed from the tuner at the Leningrad Conservatory to Leonard to Clara to Yuki, the ear transmitted, the hearing inherited.

Yuki tuned the treble. Clara heard the middle octaves, clean, the octaves even, and then the upper octaves, the territory above C7, the territory where Clara's hearing was compromised, and Clara heard — she listened, she attended — she heard the upper octaves from the chair and she heard them as she heard them, with the ear she had, and the ear heard the notes and the intervals and heard them as a quality rather than a measurement, heard the treble as bright and even and clean, and the hearing was sufficient for the listening if not for the tuning, was sufficient for the receiving if not for the correcting, and Clara sat in the chair and received the treble and the treble was correct, she believed it was correct, Yuki's ear doing what Yuki's ear could do, hearing what Clara's ear could no longer hear, and the doing was the continuation, was the work going forward, the work surviving the worker.

Yuki finished the tuning. She played a chromatic scale from A0 to C8, slowly, each note sustained, and the Bösendorfer sounded — Clara heard the Bösendorfer from the chair by the window and the Bösendorfer sounded like the Bösendorfer. Sounded like the best piano in Portland. Sounded like the instrument that Leonard had found and Clara had tended and Yuki was now tending, the sound continuous, the voice unbroken, the piano's identity preserved through the change in tuner, the identity residing not in the tuner but in the instrument, in the soundboard and the strings and the hammers and the room, and the tuner was the servant of the identity, the person who maintained it, who kept it true, and the servant had changed but the identity had not.

Mrs. Ashford was sitting in her chair across the room, the chair with the crocheted cushion, and Mrs. Ashford had been listening too, had been hearing the tuning from her chair the way she had heard every tuning for thirty-seven years, and Mrs. Ashford looked at Clara and Clara looked at Mrs. Ashford and the look between them was the look of two people who had just heard the same thing and who agreed about what they had heard without needing to speak the agreement.

"Play something," Mrs. Ashford said to Yuki.

Yuki looked at Mrs. Ashford. Yuki looked at Clara. Yuki sat at the bench and put her hands on the keys — the left hand cautiously, the wrist the consideration — and she played.

She played Chopin. Not the Nocturne in C-sharp minor — that was Clara's nocturne, Clara's piece, the piece Clara played on the Knabe in the evening — but the Nocturne in E-flat major, Opus 9 Number 2, the famous one, the one with the melody that sang like a voice, and Yuki played it with the technique that Oberlin had given her and the ear that Clara had given her and the wrist that was limited but that could do this, could play this nocturne, could produce this music on this piano in this room, and the music filled Mrs. Ashford's living room and the Bösendorfer's voice sang the Chopin and the singing was beautiful.

Clara listened. She listened from the chair by the window and she listened with the ear she had and the ear heard the Chopin in the frequencies it could hear, which was almost all of them, which was the fundamental and the lower harmonics and the middle harmonics and the upper harmonics fading above the tenth partial, and the almost-all was sufficient, was enough, was the hearing that remained after the hearing loss had taken what it took, and the remaining hearing received the Chopin and the Chopin was beautiful and the beauty was not diminished by the loss.

The nocturne ended. The last chord — E-flat major, the resolution — decayed in the room. The silence that followed was the silence that follows music in a room where the listeners are present, where the attention is complete, where the sound has been received fully, and the silence was full, was not empty, was the silence of completion.

"Thank you," Mrs. Ashford said.

Yuki closed the fallboard. She packed the tools. She put the lever in its sleeve and the mutes in the pouch and the fork in the bag's pocket and she closed the bag and lifted it and the bag was Yuki's now, the weight Yuki's, the carrying Yuki's, and Clara watched Yuki carry the bag and felt the comma — the small discrepancy between the pride and the loss, the gap that could not be closed, the irreducible remainder that no system of temperament could eliminate, the twenty-four cents that the circle of fifths refused to resolve.

They walked to the door. Mrs. Ashford stood in the hallway and said goodbye and Yuki went to the car — Clara's car, which Clara had lent her again, the lending becoming regular, the car another tool being transferred — and Clara stood on the porch for a moment with Mrs. Ashford.

"She's good," Mrs. Ashford said.

"She is."

"She tunes differently than you. The bass is slightly warmer. The treble is slightly brighter. The overall character is — similar but not identical. The way two recordings of the same piece by different pianists are similar but not identical."

Clara nodded. The observation was precise. The observation was the observation of a listener who had been hearing the same piano tuned by the same tuner for twenty-two years and who could detect the difference when the tuner changed, the difference that was not a matter of correctness — both Clara and Yuki tuned correctly — but a matter of voice, of character, of the particular quality that each tuner brought to the work, the quality that was not in the temperament or the stretch or the octaves but in the decisions within the decisions, the micro-adjustments that were guided by the ear's preferences, the preferences that were individual, personal, the tuner's signature in the sound.

"The piano doesn't mind," Mrs. Ashford said.

Clara looked at Mrs. Ashford. Eighty-five years old. The pale blue eyes. The voice that was quiet but precise. The woman who had been listening to this piano for thirty-seven years and who understood the piano the way Clara understood it, from the listener's side, from the side of the person who received the sound rather than produced it.

"No," Clara said. "The piano doesn't mind."

She walked to the car. Yuki was in the driver's seat. Clara got in the passenger seat and they drove south, through the neighborhoods Clara knew, past the houses where the pianos lived — the pianos that were Yuki's now, the pianos that Yuki would tune this week and next week and the week after, the pianos that would accept Yuki's tuning and produce Yuki's sound and be heard by their owners as correct, as right, as the piano sounding the way the piano should sound.

"How did it feel," Yuki said. "Listening."

Clara thought about the question. She thought about the chair by the window and the sound of the Bösendorfer from fifteen feet away and the temperament forming and the bass deepening and the treble brightening and the Chopin filling the room.

"It felt like hearing," Clara said. "Not tuning. Hearing."

"Is there a difference."

"Yes. The difference is that tuning listens for what's wrong. Hearing listens for what's there."

Yuki drove. The April afternoon was clear, the sky blue, the light long, the city in its brief spring before the summer arrived, the season of blossoms and clean air and the particular Portland quality of a city that had survived the rain and was being rewarded with the light.

"I'll drop you at home," Yuki said.

"Thank you."

"Same time Wednesday."

Clara smiled. "You don't need to come on Wednesday. You're not an apprentice anymore. You're a tuner."

"I know. But I'd like to come. If that's all right."

"It's all right."

Yuki dropped Clara at the house on Yamhill. Clara went inside and sat at the kitchen table and struck the fork.

A440. Clear. True. Present.

She held the fork and listened to the decay. The fundamental lasted longest, the partials fading in order, the highest first, the lowest last, and Clara listened to each partial as it faded and let it go, the way she had let go of the lever and the bag and the clients and the schedule, letting each thing fade in its turn, the letting-go not a single act but a sequence, a series of releases, each release a small loss and a small freedom.

The fundamental remained. The A remained. The one fixed point that did not change, that could not be taken by the hearing loss or the retirement or the passage of time, the pitch that was the same pitch Leonard had struck and Clara had struck and Yuki now struck, the pitch that was carried in the steel of the tines and that would be carried as long as the tines vibrated, as long as someone struck the fork, as long as the reference was needed.

Clara set the fork on the table. She went to the Knabe and opened the fallboard and played a chord — A major, the chord of the reference, the chord built on the fork's note — and the chord was slightly out of tune, was a month old, was beginning to drift, and the drift was audible and the drift was a question — would she tune it? would she correct the drift? would she take the lever from the bag on the chair and seat it on the A4 pin and bring the piano back to 440? — and the answer was yes, she would, because the tuning of her own piano was not the work she had given up but the practice she had kept, was not the professional obligation but the personal ritual, and the ritual continued, would continue, the fork and the lever and the ear and the piano in the living room of the house on Yamhill.

She would tune the Knabe tomorrow. Tonight she would let it drift. Tonight she would play the Chopin on the slightly detuned piano and the Chopin would be slightly imperfect and the imperfection would be the condition, the equal temperament of Clara's life — every note slightly out of tune so the whole system worked, every interval a compromise, every relationship a negotiation between the pure and the practical, and the compromise was not a failure but a design, was not a loss but a trade, beauty for freedom, perfection for function, the cathedral for the democracy.

She played the nocturne. The C-sharp minor. The dark one. She played it on the slightly detuned Knabe in the April light and the nocturne was beautiful despite the drift, was beautiful because of the drift, the slight imperfection giving the sound a quality that a perfectly tuned piano did not have, a quality of humanness, of weatheredness, of the sound made by an instrument that existed in the real world and that responded to the real world's conditions, and the quality was — Clara heard it, heard it with the ear she had, heard it fully, heard it clearly — the quality was the equal temperament.

She finished the nocturne. She closed the fallboard. She went to the kitchen and picked up the fork and held it without striking it. The steel was cool. The A was in the tines, potential, stored, waiting for the strike that would release it, the vibration that would produce the pitch, and the potential was permanent, was the fork's gift, the certainty that the A was there, was always there, would always be there.

She set the fork on the table. She went to bed. The April light lingered in the window. The Knabe drifted in the living room. The fork waited on the table.

The A remained.