, I raised it a full semitone and prayed to Saint Cecilia. That evening  I sat at home listening to the live broadcast. And  as my tuning vanished as the snows of spring, I got to taste humiliation on a truly national scale. Moreover, the next day my friend called saying “Well, you were so puffed up about that gig that I taped that concert for you.” 
 
There are times tuner anonymity isn’t such a bad thing.
 
(Ernst Kochsiek, by the way,  a German technician with a legendary status among performers … Alfred Brendel thinks he’s god …. says the piano in order to be stable needs one tuning for every “cent” flat that it is raised. Since a semitone consists of fifty “cents”, had the COC taken that to heart I’d just be finishing that gig now!)
 
But back to Bauer and his tuner. The Mason and Hamlin Piano Company supplied Mr. Bauer with Mr. Bacon, whom Bauer called Pop.
 
“We always travelled together and became close friends. I am sure I was closer to the heart of Pop Bacon than anyone or anything else except his pianos which were like children to him.”
 
Mr. Bacon also looked after  Mr. Bauer, and, trust me, if my experience is correct, pianos aren’t the only things that can be like children. Being British, Bauer had a bent for sarcastic humour that, by Bauer’s own account, drove poor Pop to distraction. 
 
“He felt personally responsible for my comfort and health. He also liked to advise me occasionally as to my relations with other people and he was greatly concerned by my habit of making the occasional satiric remarks ‘You ought to be careful, Mr. Bauer,’  he used to growl at me amiably but apprehensible. ‘These people don’t understand sarcasm and they don’t like it. You can’t tell what may happen. Supposing some big husky chap were to haul off and land you one, where would you be? You aren’t in any kind of physical training and I’m sure I don’t know’ …  and so his voice would trail off rather miserably.”
 
The sarcastic mouth of Harold Bauer came to the fore in an unnamed western US mining town which from his description could have been Dodge City in its prime: rough, gun toting and  ready for a concert which the audience approached in the manner of an entertainment billed “Girls !Girls! Girls!”  with latecomers banging down seats and calling to the ushers for peanuts.
 
Bauer soldiered on. “I went on again  and started (I think) the Moonlight Sonata.  In the middle of the first movement I heard the cry: ‘Chewing gum! Candy! Peanuts!’  and the ushers banging down the seats.” 
 
This was too much and Bauer came to his own defence: he strode to the footlights and in tones dripping with sarcasm gave a long diatribe ending “I must humbly beg your pardon for having forgot the arrangements to your comfort this evening. I quite forgot! I should have personally made sure the seats were turned down, and personally distributed those refreshments which are needed outside!!”
 
After the concert Pop Bacon was having his usual conniptions! “You shouldn’t have been so sarcastic Mr. Bauer! They don’t like it and they don’t understand it! Some fellow will haul off and land you one … my Lord, there they are!!” At this moment a solemn faced group had  arrived!  Bacon beat a hasty trembling retreat as a spokesman who had taken Bauer literally, thanked him for his speech from the platform and  “for your generous gesture, but we cannot allow you to assume the blame!” 
 
Bauer for once swallowed the remarks that were doubtless springing to mind. “We shook hands all round and I said: ‘You were right Pop.’”
 
Poor old Pop died in harness the following year, probably from  one too many janitors raising the steam heat at the last moment, and one too many incidents caused by Bauer himself. And his last words? “The piano will be all right this evening, Mr. Bauer”.
 
Just call us tuners handmaidens to the arts, always at  your service! Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak thrown in free, of course.

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