Jim: Just in the past 2 weeks our orchestra conductor has asked me for 441. I'm currently keeping our concert hall pianos at 441 and I'll see what comments (if any) I get. The percussion instruments are all set high from the factory. Our double reed teachers (both principals in the Dallas Symphony) want their studio pianos at 441 since that's where the DSO lives. Actually though they get a 441 from the principal oboist everyone else in the orchestra hits that a little high. The organ in the symphony hall is tuned at 443.5. When we tune a piano we set A at one place and carefully tune everything else to match as perfectly as possible. The symphony is not that way. In reality, if all the violins played exactly in tune it would sound like one violin but louder. Since that isn't (can't be) done that mixing of the slightly different pitches and varying vibrato speeds gives the sound we're used to hearing. When hearing a solo piano played, we expect these beat free unisons and virtually beat free octaves or we're in trouble. With orchestras it's not that way. I love standards too and have toed the line on 440 but I think in some ways it's a lost cause. It's been going generally up forever and I can't see that stopping. My theory is that these people with super accurate pitch recognition perceive 440 as boring and the "new" 442 is exciting. When that becomes boring, they (or their successors) will want 444 or 445. I work for Director of the Music Division. If he says 441 I'll tune 441. It's his school. dp PS Oh, that requirement for 440 in guest artist's contract is just so the piano is tuned! I don't think the vast majority of them would know nor care. David M. Porritt, RPT dporritt at smu.edu From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Jim Busby Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 9:07 PM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: [CAUT] A440, once again... All, Once again there is a push here at BYU to set A442 as our pitch standard. The Director of the School of Music is behind it, and is also the Philharmonic Orch conductor. The problem I see is that most guest artists specify A440. Sooooo... if someone visits we'll have to drop down, then back up, back down, up, down... I'm getting dizzy just thinking about it. Any strong arguments against? Or am I just "bein' contrary" as my kinfolk would say?? Thanks. Jim Busby BYU -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091110/bf57553a/attachment.htm>
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