Some would say, the benefit is an impression of increased intensity. That's why 19th-century American band instruments were commonly made at high pitch. For pipe organs, a half-step higher than normal saves money, since the lowest pipe of each rank can use as much material as the top couple of octaves. Specific to Vienna, the Institut fuer Wiener Klangstil is investigating this question of pitch, but mainly it's a tradition and Viennese orchestras are notoriously conservative. Laurence ----- Original Message ----- From: Cy Shuster To: caut at ptg.org Sent: Sunday, February 21, 2010 2:10 PM Subject: Re: [CAUT] Non-440 tuning request I've never heard a specific answer as to what the musical benefit of a higher pitch is. Certainly if Vienna has specific higher-pitch instruments, I understand. Back in my radio days, some stations would bump up the speed of turntables to 46 or 47 RPM, so their music would sound faster and snappier. What is the benefit to an orchestra? --Cy-- Cy Shuster, RPT Albuquerque, NM www.shusterpiano.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100221/d9b8ee97/attachment.htm>
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