[78-L] Concert pitch (was: no subject)

[James Tennyson]

Speaking as a piano technician,  I think you should be aware that Steinway 
was  designing their pianos to be tuned at A= 440 from the 1870's on, that 
is to say after they consulted with von Helmholtz.  I think a lot of the 
discussion of pitch is really rather fatuous. After about 1890  in North 
America at least, most organizations were tuning ( the pianos at least)  at 
either A=440 or A = 435.  I think a lot of debate around pitch is the result 
of  researchers reading  that 440 wasn't adopted officially until an 
international conference in 1939. This puts a lot of musicologists off the 
scent as it were and leads to a lot of  rather silly conclusions about 
pitch.  Tuners from about 1880  were carrying tuning forks which produced 
either A= 440 or A =435. and I suspect most  carried both forks.  My oldest 
set of tuning forks dates from  before 1914 and the A is a delightful...and 
exact  ...440 Hertz.    A= 435    by the end of the 19th century was 
referred to as "Diapason Normal " in France and  " International Pitch " in 
the States. Again the terminology has confused musicologists who confuse it 
with the CURRENT international pitch which was adopted in 1939 as I pointed 
out .
One of the most interesting anecdotes about pitch can be found in a book 
entitled The Accompanist. It is the memoirs of the superb Andre Benoist who 
accompanied everyone who was anyone in the early years of the 20th century . 
When he was touring with Lillian Nordica  in 1906 he was sent to every hall 
to check the pitch of the piano lest it be set..horror of horrors...at A=440 
: Madame by that point wanted an easy flight to her high C's. I won't go 
into the full story,,,which resulted in Benoist being slapped by Guess 
Who....but it shows that those who maintain that low pitch was the norm 
until god knows when are completely wrong.
And what am I doing this very morning? Tuning a piano at A -430...that is to 
say " Classical Pitch"  so that it can be used during rehearsals of Mozart 
at Opera Atelier here in Toronto! Ironic n'est-ce pas?
Jim Tennyson.

Message: 7
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:06:35 -0400
From: "DanK" <edisone1 at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [78-L] Concert pitch (was: no subject)
To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Message-ID: <BD31C77E03A043978682B5654CCE9D42 at t60>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=iso-8859-1;
reply-type=original

My Foster player piano has 2 notes inside - one is the manufacture date of
April 1917, and the other is that "This piano was tuned to A440 at the
factory" .  It had dropped considerably lower by the time I bought it, but
my uncle the piano-tuner brought it back to 440 without trouble (after I
laboriously twisted the dead bass strings, bringing them back to life)



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Zwarg" <doctordisc at truesoundtransfers.de>
To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 5:55 PM
Subject: Re: [78-L] Concert pitch (was: no subject)


At 23:47 15.10.2008, you wrote:
>I'm commenting here just to put a subject line in place - c'mon guys!
>
>FWIW, the US Army adopted the 440Hz A in 1917...

That's good to know, thanks! Fits well with my observation that pitches
converged more and more towards A=438 to 440 Hz after WW1. The wildly
varying pitches listed in my last message belong to the pre-1914 period,
sorry for my negligence in not making this clear.

Chris Zwarg



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