---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment You might want to do some more thorough research than a web search - and examine the veracity of your sources. For example, the website you cite is no authority - just a fellow who posted some commonly available information who doesn't even claim to for it be complete. It's an interesting collection of factoids - not conclusive evidence. There is very little evidence that any pitch was "most common" at any time before WW-I or maybe even II. One bit of evidence suggests that in the mid 1860's there were 5 different pitch standards in the city of Paris alone - 3 at the 3 different opera houses, one used by the Church and one by the military bands. A-=435 was an unsuccessful attempt to agree on a common "Concert" pitch, and no such agreement was achieved even on the concert stage - never mind in common practice. As to how common A=435 became is open to conjecture. (For that matter, it is rather questionable if A=440 today is very widely accepted on the concert stage - many wind instruments are being manufactured at higher pitches these days, and so pitch in orchestral contexts is being forced upward. We were forced to tune our concert instruments at San Francisco State University at A=441+ so that the wind players could tune to them...). As for your claims about Chopin and "most composers" writing songs in A=435 - I would love to see some of those "songs" Chopin wrote. I'm not aware of any... Most of his output - at least as a mature composer - was for piano solo, where pitch made no difference. And since his favorite pianos were Pleyels, and your source cites Pleyel's pitch in 1836 at A=446 - what gives? Did they drop their pitch just for him? Or did they drop it by 11 CPS sometime before 1849? Does the data even mean anything - did they only use that one pitch, or were they all over the place, and the other tuning forks were never found? See the perils of speculating about pitch in the 19th century? Really, the question of pitch at various times is much more complicated than the oversimplifications you will find on websites. The push for standardizing pitch doesn't really happen until after the development of rail travel (and increased concert touring) all over Europe - 2nd half of the 19th century - and the problems that instrumentalists in various locations had tuning to each other. Even the evidence from surviving tuning forks is suspect - how do we know these were the rule rather than the exception, the common practice rather than the one-time experiment? We don't... And I suspect that piano companies recommending specific pitches were strictly promotional - to show that they are "with it" on the latest trends, not as any result of specific scale or structural design features. Theirs were "seat-of-the-pants" trial-and-error design methods - not precisely calculated engineering... Israel Stein This is a most informative posting, wrapping up a number of threads that have appeared periodically. I would like to suggest an alternative theory concerning the rise of orchestral pitch (a fact, not a theory...it's been 442 in Chicago for years at Orchestra Hall). After years of playing in a variety of orchestras, I've seen wind players having to scramble to reach the pitch level of the strings...the manufacturers are only responding to what the players have reported that they need on the job. Having played on...uh..."outdated" equipment myself, I've found it necessary to have the instruments cut to reach modern pitch levels. Violinists, in particular, strive for the brilliance that a "slightly" raised pitch level affords...but in old violins especially, that can eventually lead to the instrument going "dead" as it accustoms itself to the higher tension. Solution? Raise the pitch again! (Until the instrument implodes...) These are very small increments, to be sure, but they add up to as high as 444 in some orchestras...and MOST wind players will have difficulty with their equipment at that level! Cause and effect, yes, but I'm not convinced the cause began with the wind instruments. Stan Ryberg Barrington IL jstan40@sbcglobal.net ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/2c/57/64/ed/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
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