On Nov 10, 2009, at 8:00 AM, David Skolnik wrote: > I wish I could speak to this issue with better recollection of its > history and knowledge of its current manifestations, which I'd love > to re-research, but for now, I have to settle for expressing an > marginally informed (former oboist) point of view. That said, it > would be much appreciated if someone could remind me (us) of some of > the authoritative contributions that have been made to this > discussion over the last ten or so years, by some of our members. > Ed Swenson's article is still a fascinating entre into the subject. http://www.mozartpiano.com/en/articles/pitch.php > and I know there are many others. Claude Montal, writing in 1836, tells us he had several pitches to contend with: 434, 435, 437, 438, and 441. One at one hall, one at another, all in Paris. He made forks for the different halls. And he wrote an impassioned plea for standard pitch. A History of Performing Pitch: the story of "A" by Bruce Haynes, 2002, Scarecrow Press, is probably the definitive work on standard pitch. It started as a dissertation, then was considerably expanded into a book. He looked at all historical research, all documented historical instruments that can be used a pitch sources (organs, wind instruments of some sorts - recorder, flute, cornetto being useful, many others being too variable), other data. Lots and lots of details. Bottom line, there have been "clusters" of pitch all along, and they have tended to be a whole step or a minor third apart. 415 and 465 (approximately) are one example. One used in church, the other used in bands. When the church or chamber group needed winds, they would often write a transposed part for them, though often the instrumentalist would be expected to transpose at sight. B flat instruments are a case in point. They were made as C instruments at a higher pitch, a whole step higher pitch. Their parts were transposed so they could play in ensembles a whole step lower. There were various national and regional differences, with Italians tending to be lower (that's where 388/392 comes from). And there were differences between Italian cities, and between German ones. Half step transposition was almost never done, for various practical reasons, including unequal temperaments. 440 was a regional pitch, that somehow managed to become more standard than others, though it was more as a range of pitch centered around 440. International standardization finally started to be implemented in the late 19th century, with the French 435 (tuned at a fairly high temperature, like 23C, meaning the fork probably was more like 436 or 437 at room temp - another wrinkle). The impetus behind this fairly low pitch was opera, trying to get vocal parts in a more comfortable range - the opera literature being predominantly Italian. The British had a pretty strong band tradition at that time around A 455-465, hence some of the Broadwood (and Steinway) forks in that range from that period. 435 was more or less adopted by fiat, certainly without consulting the wind players. So, since they continued to play the same instruments, pitch rose to match their instruments. In the late 1930s, the British and Germans held a standardization conference, and it seems the French weren't invited or at any rate didn't attend. They established 440. And then, of course, came the war. Meanwhile, the Viennese were doing their own thing, which happened to be A 446 or so. They still are doing that. Why should they change? Aren't they the city of Mozart and Beethoven and most of the other major classical composers? Anyway, it's a very complicated history, and our impression of "pitch inflation" is a pretty inaccurate depiction of what has taken place over the last 400 years. We are in very tame times, indeed, mostly just dealing with the range of 440 - 443, occasionally 445, and some lower pitches for historical performance practice things. Probably 442 is more of an international standard than 440 at this point. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091110/ba68cfd3/attachment.htm>
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