Amongst string instruments, lutes provide a sort of test case because the top string was typically tuned quite close to breaking point. Of course we don't know exactly what that breaking point was, but it seems very likely that the large Roman archlutes used by Corelli and Handel (often more than 70cm string length) must have played at a very low pitch, probably lower than 390. In modern times, when orchestras play at 415, it is impossible to use one of these historical-sized archlutes, so the lute instruments of the continuo section are often wildy unhistorical.
Agreed, but even this much-discussed breaking point is very variable in my experience due to the large differences in gut string quality, origin, temperature and even the speed of tightening. I have tried this a few times on my lutes, but in the end gut strings are too expensive for me to carry out experiments with which I already know the outcome.The difference can easily be more than a whole tone, and that is too much to draw exact conclusions.
@@euhdink4501 sure, but Luteshop is still right: from a practical point of view,-people rather play on anachronistic theorbos than break too many strings. Satoh did the latter and I don’t envy him nor do I see the point. Kamikaze lutes for the sake of lazy harpsichord tuners? Or for fiddlers who will not accept that Corelli might have sounded more mellow than what they expect from “a baroque” violin?
Very interesting and well documented. Although you must admit here in France where I live there are an incredible amount of historical instruments (wind instruments) from Lully's time all with a pitch that hovers around a=407. This includes flutes, oboes and bassoons. All from different makers but the same time period. You can also say the same about the musettes de cour, and organs from France and Rameau's time which hover around a=392. So the argument that organ pipes change yes this is true. But confronted with dozens of different wind instruments from different makers but all from the same area (Versailles and Paris) do indicate a pitch for Lully and Rameau.
Hello Jonathan; I'm a viol playing friend of Peter Vogelpoel; we met decades ago at his house! I think that it must be possible to get at least some idea of pitches in use from wind instruments, as you suggest.
yup, a temperature change of 15°C barely translates into a change of 44 cents (near 1/4 tone). Playing flutes in situations with changes of more than 20 °C seems a bit extreme and not usual
I agree, except that the earlier instruments (not many survived from Lully‘s time) tend to be lower, while the Naust and Rippert standard seems to have been around 405 Hz. As nobody yet mentioned Bruce Haynes‘ seminal book « A History of Performing Pitch » (Scarecrow Press 2002) I will.
Confession: I once tuned a guitar ... to the notes that best resonated within the structure of the wood itself! It turns out that objects often have their own "best frequency". A different example of this was: this percussionist I played with once beat on an old wooden/iron chair with his hands as part of a piece. It turned out that the chair was a perfect "D" note.
I tune my 12-strings guitar made from old dried spruce wood to D-standard and A427. It makes it sound incredibly rich and resonant - only moving it to A424 or A430 makes a noticeable difference in the quality of the sound.
Surely transposing by shifting the action would only work in equal temperament? in meantone this would change the pitch relationships which make early music so sweet.
5 років тому+8
Oh, Elam, sorry, I do not want to comment too much, because I like your videos, but there is a huge mistake in terms of facts in this video. Transposition (sideways shift) keyboards have ALWAYS been present in the harpsichord evolution. The first known example of it is the Müller harpsichord from 1537 which still retains its original sideways transposing keyboard. If you take into account that it originally had two bridges and thus differing string lengths for any given key and you can shift the keyboard up and down, you see that within about a 4th every transposition was possible. The stop changing mechanism makes it more than obvious that the different sets of strings originally served for transposing and not for contrasting. In the 1560's Giovanni Antonio Brena applied to the city of Milan for a patent claiming he invented a transposing device for keyboard instruments. He was denied the patent as others like Annibale de Rossi stated that such a device had already been in use. The early 18th century, around 1715 Anon Thüringian harpsichord in Eisenach originally had removable endblocks so you could shift the keyboard by, if I am not mistaken, 5 semitones!! There is an original 18th century Italian harpsichord here in Basel with originally removable endblocks which allow for a transposition by a semitone in either direction. One always finds instruments every now and then with this system. There is nothing new under the sun. But so dating the first sideways movable keyboard to 1973 is apparently false. Those makers in the 70's just invented cold water. My other remark would be that choosing 415 for an old pitch is not totally arbitrary. It is based on historical practice and on the standardisation of pitch already around the end of the 17th century. I think the pitch was never a matter of aesthetics, it served merely practical purposes. But thinking more or less in mathematically correct semitones was always important because of the transpositions in whole tones, plus because keyboards can only be shifted in halftones. So if you take any note and shift the keyboard beneath, the first theoretical result will always be a mathematically correct half step. Not even mentioning Bulyovszky, who already published his treatise on equal temperament in 1680. There are loads of accounts. But just to think of the more or less 465 organ accompanying other instruments more or less on 415. And it can all be related to the corentto pitch. Just some hypothesis, but I think Pythagoras could already measure frequencies and was aware of wavelength. Huygens certainly was. Plus I think that certainly by the time of Lully and his opera instrument makers by some means could produce and reproduce the same pitch perfectly because the Opera in Paris had its own distinct pitch. Which is, I think was, because the Opera owned the instruments and this way they could prevent their own instruments (and players taking the instruments of the opera) from mixing with any other instruments. In other words they could ensure that their own instruments will only be used in the opera. I still need to find evidence for this hypothesis, but so far this is the only reason I can think of to reason for the use of a different pitch just for one institution within a city in which another 2 pitches had been well established. Greetings! Great work
Thanks for the info! OOT question: do you say "inventing _cold_ water" for "something totally obvious" in Hungary? In Italy it's "discovering _hot_ water", but I suppose cold water is even more obvious.
4 роки тому+2
@@dlevi67 Hi, somehow I never got notified about your message here. Now I needed a bit of information which I knew I wrote here too so I came to copy it and so found your comment. Inventing cold water means for us that something has already been commonly known, part of common knowledge and so it isn't new at all even if you claim it is. In a way it also means redundant. Greetings to Italy :-)
A4=435Hz (12-TET),, installed in France 1859,, Adopted by other European countries the next 20 years,, Established and confirmed again in Vienna 1885 as the best standard pitch too use.. Was used until 1939 in most of Europe,, besides the UK that had bumped up the French 435Hz to 439Hz (assuming the french pitch was determined at a cold 15 degrees celsius, which is a mistake as the tuning forks was determining the A4=435Hz as that does not change with temperature).. The problem with pitches from 440 to 445Hz is that the passaggio is moved to far north for the dramatic voices in operas by Verdi, Puccini, Berlioz, Donezetti. 430Hz is a modern compromise to play Mozart and Händel on more period correct instruments that would lie closer to 424.5Hz with 12-TET as Händels and Mozart probably were more concerned with better harmonic major thirds and hence tuning in systems such as meantone setting their A4 slightly lower (roughly 10 cents) than the modern 12-TET.. I can't understand the use of modern A4=440Hz-443Hz ,, I find voices has to shift to color in the higher middle register when approaching and transcending the second passaggio..
This is sort of like time zones in the past. You really couldn't have them, you just made sure the local (usually church) clock rang 12 approximately when the sun was at it's highest, so you essentially had a smooth gradient of time zones with a lot of random noise from place to place.
Just discovered this channel. Wow! So much historical and proved information, explained in a way that every musicminded can understand. I already learned a lot, and still bingeing on the channel. One little remark: I like to conceive information really good, so I put the speed on 80%. That gives me more time to digest and memorize, except with the audio tracks of course. Thank you EMC for your effort. I even appreciate (if not too much) the small inserts of funny things into the video.
Thank you for this reminder that we must think for ourselves as artists on every level. With your courageous and well laid out research you clarify here an over riding truth that serves as metaphor for many issues about modern early music practice.
When I was in High School band in the 1970s, we had an electronic "device" that generated a tuning pitch. As I remember it had a choice of four tones, two of an "A" and two of a (middle?) "C". From a practical point we used the sharpest Bb Clarinet since they only came with one barrel. You can flatten a clarinet by pulling out the barrel, but you can't sharpen past fully-in. Now many student clarinets come with two barrels for tuning.
I tune my Harpsichord at the pitch it "wants" to be tuned at, that is, where the keys in the middle of the keyboard need the least movement. That pitch varies according to the time of year. Higher in the summer and lower in the winter. Could be anywhere between a=407 and 425.
@@francoisbruel9163 digital/digitized recordings are easily manipulated to that the recording conforms to the pitch of the instrument. as for instruments historical reproductions of instruments tend be much more simplistic and easier to tune in accordance with whichever instrument is around
Thanks for this and all your videos, it's some of the best educational material one could find on this platform (and not only about music). Might be interesting to consider that the first recordings of classical guitar (Llobet, Barrios, Segovia) are in a pitch of around 415. Also, early recordings of popular music from Argentina (1910's-30s) seem to use (is hard to determine as the speed of the playing may vary the pitch) something like 430 (Carlos Gardel with guitar accompagnement, but also early tango groups, like De Caro's sextet). I believe playing with a lower pitch is something rather natural for guitar players, sadly, completely abandoned in favor of the tuning fork (in fact, now, the cell phone).
Guitars used in early guitar recordings were strung with gut (and silk overwound bass) strings, of course, testifying to Shakespeare's poetic observation, "Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies". Those strings projected a warmer sound, but were less dependable in performance and produced a lower/weaker dynamic range than nylon monofilament strings. Music history seems to have produced a general 'crescendo poco a poco' and the advent of larger guitars strung with nylon (capable of greater tension) are clearly part of that trend, I think. Of course, the technology used in producing modern strings has assured more uniform gauges of the strings, providing notes of more 'accurate' pitches. The effect of temperature mentioned in the explication can be seen in the impact of fingers generating heat on nylon strings, resulting in raising of pitch, whereas one would expect the result of expansion to be a lowering of pitch.
About your point 3: I have seen Händel's extant tuning described as indicating a pitch of a' = 422.5 Herz (some say 432, or even 432.5). However, it turns out that this is actually a C fork, at c" = 512 Herz. I can imagine that 422.5 Hz a' was extrapolated via equal temperament -- which, however, is fairly certainly not a temperament that Händel would have used (it is known that organs in England were still tuned in unequal temperaments as much as a century after Händel's lifetime). I once calculated a' from C512 using a particular unequal temperament, resulting in a' = 428.8 Hz; obviously, other temperaments would produce a series of other a' frequencies.
A couple of comments. First, I loved this. But it simplified a few things. One, Bruggen and company began playing on original wind instruments at surviving historical pitches, I believe in the early 70s. There are many recordings on his collection of recorders. Two, It isn't quite so simple that everything was set to half steps around 440, although that is generally true. There were regional pitch centers, if you will, whose surviving instruments average around a nominal center. For example English instruments before the ascension of George I tend to center a=405-410 while German instruments of the same time tend to run a=420-422 or so. Interestingly, English pitch moves to German with George's arrival. Etc. Part of my understanding for the selection of a half step was 2 items: 1) it averaged these, and other, more distant centers into one pitch, and 2) that pitch was selected so it could be used with modern organs (and other keyboards) while necessitating the player of the keyboard to transpose. And, by the time of "classical" pitch the whole new family of expanded-range instruments tend to be built very close to a center around a=430. There is some variation, and surviving instruments tend to have numerous corps de rechange which are only fractionally apart. This appears to have been in some way related to the rise of the touring virtuoso who required a more uniform standard across Europe than a city-wide "standard". Exactly how this was achieved by builders is problematic, but it appears to have been. I should mention that France is the home of standardization in the 18th century (not just in music, but in things like the names of ships' rigs and carriage types, to name a few) with the rise of the encyclopedists. I suspect this was part of a wider trend, and pitch standardization may have reflected that current in the mind-set. I think one of the problems early musicologists had was organizing a very widely scattered sample of pitches into regional groups and then adding a temporal layer to the problem, and that affected the way we developed.
Love your videos! It seems no one has pointed out that a 12-TET semitone above 440 Hz is just over 466 Hz, not 465 Hz. More precisely (but still approximately), the whole tone range centred on 440 Hz goes from 415.30 Hz to 466.16 Hz. (A difference of 1 Hz is about 4 cents in this range.) Thank you for your great work here.
Well done. I know that "period authenticity" is a very touchy subject. In a parallel universe, I believe it was the stage director Jonathan Miller (?) who observed that you can often tell from photographs what decade an "authentic period style" play or opera was done in, based not on what may have been authentic at the time the play or opera was first done, but by what artists and scholars of later eras believed was authentic.
There's an entry in L'Art du Faiseur d'Instruments et de Lutherie from the Encyclopédie Raisonnée that suggests that the transposing keyboard introduced by Frank Hubbard may have already existed by the end of the 18th century, at least.
Thank you again, great details. Irving Berlin, who did not read music, and composed "with the black keys", bought pianos with sliding keyboards in the 1920s and 30s, when apparently...they were available.
The City COncert Hall in Rotterdam, called De Doelen, was scientifically designed for the optimum rendition of tuning from A=440Hz. However, in practice, there had been an error in construction, so the optimum tuning now starts with A=444 for perfect sound reflection in the concert hall. Isn't that funny?
Hello professor Rotem. Is it possible to make an episode on history of the perfect pitch? Listening to this video, I was wandering all the time what happened to the people who had perfect pitch at various times in history. How did they hear, what was the mean tone for them in their time, how did it work... Thank you in advance. Sorry if you've already made it and I couldn't find such video.
@@musik350 lower pitch means lower beat frequencies in chords which will create a calmer, more relaxed feel. You only have to think about “key colour” in unequal temperaments where there is a significant change of beat frequencies, most noticeable in thirds, leading to a specific key choice by the composer and the music evoking a particular feeling. 3+ sharps for bright and joyous music, 4+ flats (and a minor key) for dark, sombre music.
Nice and true. But woodwinds do not suffer the problems of organs and we have manu of them left out of wich we can assess a pitch. All of existing traverso from seventeenth and eighteenth century have a low pitch that is still measurable and is the one they actually had at the time. Statistically most of them fall or around A=415 or A=360, Hertz more Hertz less. Many organs changed pitch in time also because of maintenance, as the pipes got rust at the open edge and the pipes were cut to ripristinate a smooth outlet Edge causing the pitch to raise.
Oh my. I can't wait until some 432er claims that 440 came from Mordor. Nice work as usual. Cheers from Vienna, which used its own inch (26.4mm) until relatively recently, Scott
I don‘t know about « Mordor » but 440 was certainly heavily lobbied for by the Nazis. Cheering with an füatl Göbn Muskateller in 435 (Philharmonische Stimmung)!
I remember learning that J.S. Bach had to deal with two contrasting pitch standards: chamber pitch (around 415) and choir pitch (around 466). The higher choir pitch is supposedly to do with organs being tuned higher to save on tin. Even if this is a gross oversimplification, and the two were more like vague pitch “regions” than pitch “standards”, there seems to be something to it. In pretty much every cantata composed before he arrived in Leipzig, Bach seems to have made the instruments tune up to the high organ. But in Leipzig, Bach adopted the practice of creating a transposed organ part for every cantata - so if the cantata is in D minor, the organ gets a part written in C minor. Even when Bach re-performed his pre-Leipzig cantatas in Leipzig, he re-formatted their scores according to his new Leipzig system. I’m guessing he adopted this approach because some of the instruments were struggling to play well at the higher organ pitch.
I studied in the 1990s when A=415 was all the rage. I went to a new local Baroque ensemble's concert recently and at intermission asked one of the players what pitch they played at. The answer: A=442. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thanks heaps mate, that was really, really interesting. I tune my fiddle down a tone, which would be A = 392, and it makes all the difference to me: it sounds infinitely better, to my ear and to the ears of my listeners, and it's much easier and more enjoyable to play.
ISO 16 (International Organization for Standardization), mid-1970s; but ANSI _former ASA (i n USA) used as "standard" before, around the 1930s (with the growing business of instrument making factories). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertz#History
The size of the foot, incidentally, could vary within a single building for very specific architectural and engineering reasons. The variations in mensuration parallel those of pitch and harmony because of maths.
I'm currently working with Capstan try to fix a 1963 Philips recording made at Notre Dame, where on side B, the most modern music of the record, there was a work for organ and a choir of brasses where the last ones where pitched at A=435 and the organ fluctuates between A=429 to 433. No matter how powerfull software is Capstan, it is impossible to make this record sound "natural". I've been working with it from about 2 months, correcting bar by bar and it looks that is wasted time.
"We must accept the world we live in..." This is one of those quotes I would say when some shitty luck happens to my friends. Because life is life and we aren't the true masters of life. Only true master of life is whole existence of all living organism that are or has been alive
When my friends are upset with life, I just tell them to lay down and die. I should try what you say, it's a little nicer. But not much. Anyway, we are horrible people, aren't we.
I don't think the situation is all that fuzzy. I'm a recorder player. Although temperature can affect the basic pitch of a recorder by a few cents, it's a very small amount and tuning the instrument by drawing out or pushing in the head joint gives very poor results because it upsets the entire scale of the instrument. So a recorder built in A-442 could be played satisfactorily in 438- 442 maybe, but without much more variability than that, except for the case of very high temperature bringing it up to maybe 443-444 at the absolute maximum (most modern pitch recorders are built to 442 these days). If I found a recorder that seems to play at around 412 from the early 18th century I'd have to say it was built to play with instruments playing at 408-414. Other wind instruments have more variability due to embouchure control and the variability of reed making. Quite a few early 18th-century recorders do seem to have an A of around 412. That other winds are generally pitched significantly lower than 440 is pretty demonstrable. The 415 standard adopted by most historical performers of Baroque music has more to do with transposing keyboards conveniently transposing to 415 (approximately a modern G#) than as an imagined universal historical low standard pitch. But the inconvenience of everyone playing at different pitches today would make historical performance pretty impossible so 415 has been settled on since it is recognized that early 18th-century pitch was substantially lower than today in most places. Probably a lot of people performing Baroque music don't really know why this was adopted, but I think very few believe that 415 was once a universal standard. The 415 standard for Baroque music and the now fairly standard 460 or 466 for Renaissance music has at least helped assure some consistency in the instrumentaria used to perform period music.
Small quibble, I know for a fact in the 1850s, the first device to sample pitch from a noise was the helmholtz resonator. But the technology was known before, with acoustical bowls, and other physical resonant sources built into performance halls.
Interesting and of course, when you think about it, quite logical. I have owned various old keyboard instruments which have been used for unaccompanied playing and at some pitches certain notes have had a poor tone. I worked on the assumption that it did not have to be A=415, 440 or some number that generally seems to be etched in stone. I ended up with a clavichord at A=407 and a harpsichord at A=425. This gave the best sounding results and was therefore right to my mind. The idiosyncrasies of every historic instrument (and their modern replicas) will guarantee they will all have their own ideal pitch where they sound their best and to standardise them is to compromise. While sometimes necessary for accompanists, why compromise when unnecessary?
Here are three examples of three different wind instruments from three totally different European countries all from the 18th century. One a oboe, a bassoon and a recorder which as you know are just three of many example of wind instruments as well as organs from this period. This indicates at least for the first part of the 18th century a semi-standard pitch of a=405h : Modeled after the four-keyed original in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, the Eichentopf bassoon is representative of the Saxon type bassoon of the first half of the century and could easily have been the instrument used in Bach's Leipzig orchestra. Originally pitch-centered close to A-405Hz, this instrument has been scaled up to the standard A-415. It is also available at the low A-392Hz pitch and its original A-405Hz. Faithful to the original, the replica has brass ferrules, keywork and an ornamental crown on the bell. The instrument's scale and tone is even and focused with exceptional dynamic flexibility throughout its range. The instrument is offered with four keys and the option of adding a fifth, low Eb key. Please inquire about the choices of wood.
home > list > Hautboy after Carlo Palanca. A = 405 Hz and 415 Hz Hautboy after Carlo Palanca Pitch A=405 Hz. Stained boxwood. Three silver rings and keys. The original instrument : Private collection. « Straight top » hautboy, light stained boxwood. One silver ring at the top has been replaced by a horn ring. Place of an ivory ring on the bell, rather badly cracked. The mark Carlo Palanca can be seen on each joint. This hautboy has probably been made during the 1750s. This straight top hautboy is the only known instrument of this type by Carlo Palanca. Its low pitch (A = 405 Hz) could indicate that it was played in Rome where the standard was rather low at that time. Carlo Palanca was active in Torino during most of the XVIIIth century, since he died in 1783 almost a hundred years old. Alto recorder after Bressan As an English recorder maker, it seemed strange never to have made an alto based on an English model. So a few years ago, I took the plans I had of the ex Hunt collection alto that is now in the Bate Collection, Oxford and decided to make a close copy of it. The original has full ivory mounts single holes and is pitched around a=405 Hz and I am making a copy of this instrument, without the ivory mounts. The waiting time for these instruments is at the moment shorter than for my “Denner” model, please let me know if you would like any further information.
Transposing instruments existed long before the modern era: the Ruckers transposing harpsichords. Alo I believe the Venetian 16th C harpsichord range up to f''' was for transposing reasons (up a 4th). How else can you explain it? Another example is the 1749 Silbermann fortepiano, perhaps the first example of semitone transposition.
about the only definite statement you can make about historical vs modern IMHO, is that historical pitches are lower that modern pitches. I say that only because the modern string instruments are structurally stronger so they can use steel strings with higher tension (mostly for volume and brilliance in modern concert halls). this pushes the pitch up relative to earlier eras.
Organs were frequently above modern pitch as a higher pitch required less metal to make the shorter pipes. Quite a consideration if it is a large instrument with 5000+ pipes!
As a practical limit to pitch, I can say from experience that the gut E on the violin doesn't withstand the tension of modern pitch for longer than a week or two. What to do when you play with a modern piano or harpsichord or organ at modern pitch. Well I always tune the string down a little bit afterwards. And practice at lower pitch. I noticed that modern players on steel string cannot do that. Players struggle to adapt to a seriously low organ. Absolute pitch memory can be a hindrance then.
Couldn't they have used beat frequencies between connected string segments of known slightly different lengths to determine absolute pitch to within a few Hz? If you have a string 881 mm long and divide it with a bridge at the 440 mm mark, and the bridge has a roller so that the tension will be equal at both ends of the string (not held different by friction on the bridge), and the tension and moment of intertia is such that their resonant frequencies are 441.00 Hz on the shorter segment and 440.00 Hz on the longer segment, and then you bow both of them with bow wheels like those of a hurdy-gurdy to enable continuous sounding, they will beat at a frequency of 1 Hz, or 60 beats per minute. But if the string has gone flat, so that now the segments have frequencies of 418.95 Hz and 418.00 Hz, and the beat frequency will be 0.95 Hz, or 57 beats per minute. So then you know that you need to tune the string back up until you once again get 60 beats per minute. Then you use the segment chosen beforehand (for instance the 441 mm segment to get 440 Hz) bowed separately (with the other segment lightly damped so as to quell its sound without altering the tension) as your reference pitch.
Today I was listening to a CD of Helmut Walcha playing Buxtehude in 1977 and I was surprised to hear that the pitch was far above A = 440, so I looked on UA-cam to see what I could find out about baroque pitch and I watched your interesting presentation. At 9:11 you talk about the transposition mechanism for keyboard instruments that was introduced in 1973, but I can't see how this mechanism can be valid for a specialist in baroque performance. Presumably with a harpsichord this mechanism alters the position of the keyboard relative to the strings, and surely the result will only be legitimate if the harpsichord is tuned in equal temperament? If the instrument has been tuned to unequal temperament, which a specialist baroque performer nowadays would prefer, playing a work in (for instance) E minor with the mechanism shifted to transpose down a semitone will alter the relative intervals between steps of the scale that the specialist associates with E minor (because the harpsichord will be presenting the non-tempered intervals associated with E flat minor). But I'm assuming that there is a 'standard' way to tune in unequal temperament, and perhaps there isn't - sorry if this is a naive assumption on my part. So would a baroque specialist ever use such a mechanism, or would he insist on the more purist solution of manually retuning every string a semitone lower, so that when he is playing in E minor but at A = 415, he is still hearing the same non-tempered intervals between steps of the scale that he would hear when playing at A = 440?
After you shift the keyboard you tune in whatever temperament you want. But even without this mechanism it is possible to tune instruments in different pitches. The mechanism we mentioned is just to avoid changing the tuning drastically often, as instruments like to stay more or less on the same pitch.
Well as a guitar player, I find most modern acoustic guitars have resonance frequencies that I have infact tuned strings to when other tuning devices were not available. It has always been accurate and yes I have found some guitars tuned to a different frequency but it is noticeable by modern day comparison. I can’t understand why the exact same type of comparisons can’t be done to antique pitch forks pipes or instruments? Getting a parameter for A should not be so problematic imo.
In the classical guitar, the lower strings are tuned close to the main frequency at which the internal air volume of the guitar resonates (it works like a Helmholtz resonator, near 90-120Hz). That is defined by the size of the body and the width of the opening. Only a specific range of low frequencies are reinforced there, the mid and high frequencies come only from the soundboard. That is why it's notorious in instruments with a smaller body (such as baroque guitars, and those of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century) that main bass resonance isn't present. By having a smaller volume of air (smaller size body size) that Helmoltz resonance rise, and reinforce more in the middle range of the instrument. www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/guitar/intro_engl.html
Thanks for making these amazing videos! By the way, I have a double manual Schütze harpsichord of 1963 which has a transposition mechanism. So far, I haven't seen any earlier example yet.
Rucker’s used Duims which correspond to modern inches. Harpsichords sound much better at lower pitch. I have a Dulcken at about a fourth below modern pitch. My favourite instrument but only for solo performance.
Chopin’s pitch: 434.4 in well temperament Haydn’s pitch: 426hz in well temperament Beethoven’s pitch: 455.5 in well temperament Bach’s pitch: 416-418hz in well temperament Grieg’s pitch: 435hz in equal temperament Brahms, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff’s pitch: 439hz in equal temperament Everyone after WW2: 440hz, maybe 442hz if in Europe
Thank you for a brilliant historical and philosophical exposition of a complex set of problems. Altogether, one finds a rigidity in much contemporary "early music" theory and practice that is completely out of tune (in more ways than one!) with what we know of the Zeitgeist of the old masters. It is refreshing to see that your disquisition manages to avoid such nonsense.
Fantastic! I have the honour of teaching bowed strings in schools in England and also playing on gut strings professionally. I was at a primary school yesterday explaining to a 6 year old that "out of tune means it's doesn't match" whilst trying desperately to tune his tiny violin to a school piano. We are basically in kind of greenhouse in the playground so the pitch is completely different to what it was before the Christmas holidays, freezing at night and open to all temperatures! Well, I'm used to 415, A430 A 440 but I'm going to call this one "Mordor pitch/temperament"!
Wouldn't an organ sound higher in the winter, rather than lower as you suggest around 2:20? The pipes would contract in cooler temperatures, and smaller pipes sound higher, right?
It's not the pipe length that's affected by temperature changes as much as it is the speed of sound. The speed of sound (c) drops fairly rapidly as the temperature falls, so even though the pipe shortens slightly, its not enough to offset that change. The frequency of an unstopped organ pipe can be calculated as f = c/l where c is the speed of sound and l is the speaking length. Here's a link to a simple discussion about the speed of sound vs. temperature.
Many, many great guitarists of the popular styles of the 20th century would tune a semitome or more below standard pitch. Why? It felt, played and sounded better to them, either for vocal considerations or just for guitar reasons. Many different pitch centers were decided upon as feelling and sounding 'just right' for studio recordings, as well. Totally normal and common practice way back then, back then, then, now and into the future.
My first introduction to the idea of historical pitch was listening to Simon and Garfunkel's song The Boxer in the car and realizing it was , the guitars and voices are tuned to about A425
I like the phrase "modern historical pitch".
I have lost a day of my life hypnotized by this brilliant fellow. I cannot stop listening to his presentations.
Lol... I am doing the same thing right now!
It’s inevitable
You have not lost, you have won !
My joy watching your channel went off the charts the moment you used a map of middle-earth for the background at 3:09.
And then I noticed the stuffed narwhal, the pineapple lamp, and the piggy with the glasses.
"Historical pitch didn't arrive too early nor too late. It arrives precisely when it means to."
One pitch to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them.
@@ericstern8386 and in the darkness tune them
Amongst string instruments, lutes provide a sort of test case because the top string was typically tuned quite close to breaking point. Of course we don't know exactly what that breaking point was, but it seems very likely that the large Roman archlutes used by Corelli and Handel (often more than 70cm string length) must have played at a very low pitch, probably lower than 390. In modern times, when orchestras play at 415, it is impossible to use one of these historical-sized archlutes, so the lute instruments of the continuo section are often wildy unhistorical.
Agreed, but even this much-discussed breaking point is very variable in my experience due to the large differences in gut string quality, origin, temperature and even the speed of tightening. I have tried this a few times on my lutes, but in the end gut strings are too expensive for me to carry out experiments with which I already know the outcome.The difference can easily be more than a whole tone, and that is too much to draw exact conclusions.
@@euhdink4501 sure, but Luteshop is still right: from a practical point of view,-people rather play on anachronistic theorbos than break too many strings. Satoh did the latter and I don’t envy him nor do I see the point. Kamikaze lutes for the sake of lazy harpsichord tuners? Or for fiddlers who will not accept that Corelli might have sounded more mellow than what they expect from “a baroque” violin?
Very interesting and well documented. Although you must admit here in France where I live there are an incredible amount of historical instruments (wind instruments) from Lully's time all with a pitch that hovers around a=407. This includes flutes, oboes and bassoons. All from different makers but the same time period. You can also say the same about the musettes de cour, and organs from France and Rameau's time which hover around a=392. So the argument that organ pipes change yes this is true. But confronted with dozens of different wind instruments from different makers but all from the same area (Versailles and Paris) do indicate a pitch for Lully and Rameau.
Hello Jonathan; I'm a viol playing friend of Peter Vogelpoel; we met decades ago at his house! I think that it must be possible to get at least some idea of pitches in use from wind instruments, as you suggest.
Very interesting
yup, a temperature change of 15°C barely translates into a change of 44 cents (near 1/4 tone). Playing flutes in situations with changes of more than 20 °C seems a bit extreme and not usual
I agree, except that the earlier instruments (not many survived from Lully‘s time) tend to be lower, while the Naust and Rippert standard seems to have been around 405 Hz. As nobody yet mentioned Bruce Haynes‘ seminal book « A History of Performing Pitch » (Scarecrow Press 2002) I will.
What a wonderful antidote to the doctrinaire rigidity that too often blights our profession! Thank you.
Love your map of Middle Earth when discussing the standardization of pitch with the advent of the tuning fork!
I really love how you actually lowered the pitch in your intro/outro music!
1:21 "absolute unit"
I continue to be thoroughly educated and entertained by your channel's videos. Thank you for your efforts on behalf of early music lovers everywhere!
Pitches, Pitches, Pitches; piches
Oh I love'ya
Confession: I once tuned a guitar ... to the notes that best resonated within the structure of the wood itself! It turns out that objects often have their own "best frequency". A different example of this was: this percussionist I played with once beat on an old wooden/iron chair with his hands as part of a piece. It turned out that the chair was a perfect "D" note.
I tune my 12-strings guitar made from old dried spruce wood to D-standard and A427. It makes it sound incredibly rich and resonant - only moving it to A424 or A430 makes a noticeable difference in the quality of the sound.
Very interesting! One of the best channels ever!
REALLY
Thanks for this interesting video! A minor point, but the Mueller harpsichord, for example, had a transposing keyboard.
Surely transposing by shifting the action would only work in equal temperament? in meantone this would change the pitch relationships which make early music so sweet.
Oh, Elam, sorry, I do not want to comment too much, because I like your videos, but there is a huge mistake in terms of facts in this video. Transposition (sideways shift) keyboards have ALWAYS been present in the harpsichord evolution. The first known example of it is the Müller harpsichord from 1537 which still retains its original sideways transposing keyboard. If you take into account that it originally had two bridges and thus differing string lengths for any given key and you can shift the keyboard up and down, you see that within about a 4th every transposition was possible. The stop changing mechanism makes it more than obvious that the different sets of strings originally served for transposing and not for contrasting.
In the 1560's Giovanni Antonio Brena applied to the city of Milan for a patent claiming he invented a transposing device for keyboard instruments. He was denied the patent as others like Annibale de Rossi stated that such a device had already been in use.
The early 18th century, around 1715 Anon Thüringian harpsichord in Eisenach originally had removable endblocks so you could shift the keyboard by, if I am not mistaken, 5 semitones!!
There is an original 18th century Italian harpsichord here in Basel with originally removable endblocks which allow for a transposition by a semitone in either direction.
One always finds instruments every now and then with this system. There is nothing new under the sun. But so dating the first sideways movable keyboard to 1973 is apparently false. Those makers in the 70's just invented cold water.
My other remark would be that choosing 415 for an old pitch is not totally arbitrary. It is based on historical practice and on the standardisation of pitch already around the end of the 17th century. I think the pitch was never a matter of aesthetics, it served merely practical purposes. But thinking more or less in mathematically correct semitones was always important because of the transpositions in whole tones, plus because keyboards can only be shifted in halftones. So if you take any note and shift the keyboard beneath, the first theoretical result will always be a mathematically correct half step. Not even mentioning Bulyovszky, who already published his treatise on equal temperament in 1680. There are loads of accounts. But just to think of the more or less 465 organ accompanying other instruments more or less on 415. And it can all be related to the corentto pitch.
Just some hypothesis, but I think Pythagoras could already measure frequencies and was aware of wavelength. Huygens certainly was.
Plus I think that certainly by the time of Lully and his opera instrument makers by some means could produce and reproduce the same pitch perfectly because the Opera in Paris had its own distinct pitch. Which is, I think was, because the Opera owned the instruments and this way they could prevent their own instruments (and players taking the instruments of the opera) from mixing with any other instruments. In other words they could ensure that their own instruments will only be used in the opera. I still need to find evidence for this hypothesis, but so far this is the only reason I can think of to reason for the use of a different pitch just for one institution within a city in which another 2 pitches had been well established.
Greetings! Great work
Thanks for the info!
OOT question: do you say "inventing _cold_ water" for "something totally obvious" in Hungary? In Italy it's "discovering _hot_ water", but I suppose cold water is even more obvious.
@@dlevi67 Hi, somehow I never got notified about your message here. Now I needed a bit of information which I knew I wrote here too so I came to copy it and so found your comment. Inventing cold water means for us that something has already been commonly known, part of common knowledge and so it isn't new at all even if you claim it is. In a way it also means redundant.
Greetings to Italy :-)
Forget about the ring, the tuning fork was the one that unified and ruled them all
A4=435Hz (12-TET),, installed in France 1859,, Adopted by other European countries the next 20 years,, Established and confirmed again in Vienna 1885 as the best standard pitch too use.. Was used until 1939 in most of Europe,, besides the UK that had bumped up the French 435Hz to 439Hz (assuming the french pitch was determined at a cold 15 degrees celsius, which is a mistake as the tuning forks was determining the A4=435Hz as that does not change with temperature).. The problem with pitches from 440 to 445Hz is that the passaggio is moved to far north for the dramatic voices in operas by Verdi, Puccini, Berlioz, Donezetti.
430Hz is a modern compromise to play Mozart and Händel on more period correct instruments that would lie closer to 424.5Hz with 12-TET as Händels and Mozart probably were more concerned with better harmonic major thirds and hence tuning in systems such as meantone setting their A4 slightly lower (roughly 10 cents) than the modern 12-TET..
I can't understand the use of modern A4=440Hz-443Hz ,, I find voices has to shift to color in the higher middle register when approaching and transcending the second passaggio..
This is sort of like time zones in the past. You really couldn't have them, you just made sure the local (usually church) clock rang 12 approximately when the sun was at it's highest, so you essentially had a smooth gradient of time zones with a lot of random noise from place to place.
Just discovered this channel. Wow! So much historical and proved information, explained in a way that every musicminded can understand. I already learned a lot, and still bingeing on the channel. One little remark: I like to conceive information really good, so I put the speed on 80%. That gives me more time to digest and memorize, except with the audio tracks of course. Thank you EMC for your effort. I even appreciate (if not too much) the small inserts of funny things into the video.
Thank you for this reminder that we must think for ourselves as artists on every level. With your courageous and well laid out research you clarify here an over riding truth that serves as metaphor for many issues about modern early music practice.
When I was in High School band in the 1970s, we had an electronic "device" that generated a tuning pitch. As I remember it had a choice of four tones, two of an "A" and two of a (middle?) "C". From a practical point we used the sharpest Bb Clarinet since they only came with one barrel. You can flatten a clarinet by pulling out the barrel, but you can't sharpen past fully-in. Now many student clarinets come with two barrels for tuning.
Hace poco tiempo que estudio música antigua y me son muy útiles vuestros videos . Gracias de verdad
I tune my Harpsichord at the pitch it "wants" to be tuned at, that is, where the keys in the middle of the keyboard need the least movement. That pitch varies according to the time of year. Higher in the summer and lower in the winter. Could be anywhere between a=407 and 425.
Lloyd Tatum, of course it is perfectly fine… until you wish to play along with other instruments, or, say, over recordings!
@@francoisbruel9163
digital/digitized recordings are easily manipulated to that the recording conforms to the pitch of the instrument.
as for instruments historical reproductions of instruments tend be much more simplistic and easier to tune in accordance with whichever instrument is around
I f**cking love this channel. Just marvelous
Such a great channel! Thank you for all this important and helpful informations you are giving to the music world!
Thanks for this and all your videos, it's some of the best educational material one could find on this platform (and not only about music).
Might be interesting to consider that the first recordings of classical guitar (Llobet, Barrios, Segovia) are in a pitch of around 415.
Also, early recordings of popular music from Argentina (1910's-30s) seem to use (is hard to determine as the speed of the playing may vary the pitch) something like 430 (Carlos Gardel with guitar accompagnement, but also early tango groups, like De Caro's sextet).
I believe playing with a lower pitch is something rather natural for guitar players, sadly, completely abandoned in favor of the tuning fork (in fact, now, the cell phone).
Guitars used in early guitar recordings were strung with gut (and silk overwound bass) strings, of course, testifying to Shakespeare's poetic observation, "Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies". Those strings projected a warmer sound, but were less dependable in performance and produced a lower/weaker dynamic range than nylon monofilament strings. Music history seems to have produced a general 'crescendo poco a poco' and the advent of larger guitars strung with nylon (capable of greater tension) are clearly part of that trend, I think. Of course, the technology used in producing modern strings has assured more uniform gauges of the strings, providing notes of more 'accurate' pitches. The effect of temperature mentioned in the explication can be seen in the impact of fingers generating heat on nylon strings, resulting in raising of pitch, whereas one would expect the result of expansion to be a lowering of pitch.
Beautiful! Dear Master, you are just simply great! I am learning so much with your teachings! Many hugs!
As far as I know,in Britain musicians were using judge variety of A some reaching over a=450.So the tuning wasn't always on the lower side.
Choose always the best music for here and now, that is the most historical thing.
About your point 3: I have seen Händel's extant tuning described as indicating a pitch of a' = 422.5 Herz (some say 432, or even 432.5). However, it turns out that this is actually a C fork, at c" = 512 Herz. I can imagine that 422.5 Hz a' was extrapolated via equal temperament -- which, however, is fairly certainly not a temperament that Händel would have used (it is known that organs in England were still tuned in unequal temperaments as much as a century after Händel's lifetime). I once calculated a' from C512 using a particular unequal temperament, resulting in a' = 428.8 Hz; obviously, other temperaments would produce a series of other a' frequencies.
I have used A=405
I just didn’t want my clavichord to be so highly strung
I love your videos. They are well informed and well done. I like to share them with my piano technician friends. Thanks for making them!
This is off topic, but on your website, what does "A leph" mean? I'm going to buy my hubby a mug & tshirt of the guido hand. He will love it! 😁
A couple of comments. First, I loved this. But it simplified a few things. One, Bruggen and company began playing on original wind instruments at surviving historical pitches, I believe in the early 70s. There are many recordings on his collection of recorders. Two, It isn't quite so simple that everything was set to half steps around 440, although that is generally true. There were regional pitch centers, if you will, whose surviving instruments average around a nominal center. For example English instruments before the ascension of George I tend to center a=405-410 while German instruments of the same time tend to run a=420-422 or so. Interestingly, English pitch moves to German with George's arrival. Etc. Part of my understanding for the selection of a half step was 2 items: 1) it averaged these, and other, more distant centers into one pitch, and 2) that pitch was selected so it could be used with modern organs (and other keyboards) while necessitating the player of the keyboard to transpose. And, by the time of "classical" pitch the whole new family of expanded-range instruments tend to be built very close to a center around a=430. There is some variation, and surviving instruments tend to have numerous corps de rechange which are only fractionally apart. This appears to have been in some way related to the rise of the touring virtuoso who required a more uniform standard across Europe than a city-wide "standard". Exactly how this was achieved by builders is problematic, but it appears to have been. I should mention that France is the home of standardization in the 18th century (not just in music, but in things like the names of ships' rigs and carriage types, to name a few) with the rise of the encyclopedists. I suspect this was part of a wider trend, and pitch standardization may have reflected that current in the mind-set. I think one of the problems early musicologists had was organizing a very widely scattered sample of pitches into regional groups and then adding a temporal layer to the problem, and that affected the way we developed.
Thanks!
Love your videos! It seems no one has pointed out that a 12-TET semitone above 440 Hz is just over 466 Hz, not 465 Hz. More precisely (but still approximately), the whole tone range centred on 440 Hz goes from 415.30 Hz to 466.16 Hz. (A difference of 1 Hz is about 4 cents in this range.) Thank you for your great work here.
Well done. I know that "period authenticity" is a very touchy subject. In a parallel universe, I believe it was the stage director Jonathan Miller (?) who observed that you can often tell from photographs what decade an "authentic period style" play or opera was done in, based not on what may have been authentic at the time the play or opera was first done, but by what artists and scholars of later eras believed was authentic.
Muchas gracias por tu trabajo Saludos
There's an entry in L'Art du Faiseur d'Instruments et de Lutherie from the Encyclopédie Raisonnée that suggests that the transposing keyboard introduced by Frank Hubbard may have already existed by the end of the 18th century, at least.
Amazing video! This channel is my new home on UA-cam! Love you, guys!!
Excellent episode. Did you consult with Bruce Haynes's book as well?
Thank you again, great details. Irving Berlin, who did not read music, and composed "with the black keys", bought pianos with sliding keyboards in the 1920s and 30s, when apparently...they were available.
The City COncert Hall in Rotterdam, called De Doelen, was scientifically designed for the optimum rendition of tuning from A=440Hz. However, in practice, there had been an error in construction, so the optimum tuning now starts with A=444 for perfect sound reflection in the concert hall. Isn't that funny?
Hello professor Rotem. Is it possible to make an episode on history of the perfect pitch? Listening to this video, I was wandering all the time what happened to the people who had perfect pitch at various times in history. How did they hear, what was the mean tone for them in their time, how did it work... Thank you in advance. Sorry if you've already made it and I couldn't find such video.
Dispatch A 440 ! It’s hard on stringed instruments and the ears.
@Egg MCMUFFIN every pitch that's lower seems 'warmer'. If you'd try 430 now, you'd probably say it's even warmer
@@musik350 lower pitch means lower beat frequencies in chords which will create a calmer, more relaxed feel. You only have to think about “key colour” in unequal temperaments where there is a significant change of beat frequencies, most noticeable in thirds, leading to a specific key choice by the composer and the music evoking a particular feeling. 3+ sharps for bright and joyous music, 4+ flats (and a minor key) for dark, sombre music.
@@nigellong1460 That's what I meant, thanks for explaining it more precisely :)
Nice and true. But woodwinds do not suffer the problems of organs and we have manu of them left out of wich we can assess a pitch. All of existing traverso from seventeenth and eighteenth century have a low pitch that is still measurable and is the one they actually had at the time. Statistically most of them fall or around A=415 or A=360, Hertz more Hertz less. Many organs changed pitch in time also because of maintenance, as the pipes got rust at the open edge and the pipes were cut to ripristinate a smooth outlet Edge causing the pitch to raise.
My God, why did I find this channel so late? Awesome job!
Oh my. I can't wait until some 432er claims that 440 came from Mordor.
Nice work as usual. Cheers from Vienna, which used its own inch (26.4mm) until relatively recently, Scott
I don‘t know about « Mordor » but 440 was certainly heavily lobbied for by the Nazis. Cheering with an füatl Göbn Muskateller in 435 (Philharmonische Stimmung)!
I remember learning that J.S. Bach had to deal with two contrasting pitch standards: chamber pitch (around 415) and choir pitch (around 466). The higher choir pitch is supposedly to do with organs being tuned higher to save on tin.
Even if this is a gross oversimplification, and the two were more like vague pitch “regions” than pitch “standards”, there seems to be something to it. In pretty much every cantata composed before he arrived in Leipzig, Bach seems to have made the instruments tune up to the high organ. But in Leipzig, Bach adopted the practice of creating a transposed organ part for every cantata - so if the cantata is in D minor, the organ gets a part written in C minor. Even when Bach re-performed his pre-Leipzig cantatas in Leipzig, he re-formatted their scores according to his new Leipzig system. I’m guessing he adopted this approach because some of the instruments were struggling to play well at the higher organ pitch.
I studied in the 1990s when A=415 was all the rage. I went to a new local Baroque ensemble's concert recently and at intermission asked one of the players what pitch they played at. The answer: A=442. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thanks heaps mate, that was really, really interesting. I tune my fiddle down a tone, which would be A = 392, and it makes all the difference to me: it sounds infinitely better, to my ear and to the ears of my listeners, and it's much easier and more enjoyable to play.
And gut strings last just little bit longer!
Excellent. Daniel Cuiller plays French music (Couperin…) at this pitch (Ton de l‘opéra) and his violin sound ravishing.
Thanks! This has been a great curiosity of mine from a long time. This is another step to understanding it!
Congratulations for the excellent content. Could you tell the origin and scientific reasons for choosing the A4 grade as the concert pitch?
ISO 16 (International Organization for Standardization), mid-1970s; but ANSI _former ASA (i n USA) used as "standard" before, around the 1930s (with the growing business of instrument making factories).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertz#History
The size of the foot, incidentally, could vary within a single building for very specific architectural and engineering reasons. The variations in mensuration parallel those of pitch and harmony because of maths.
I'm currently working with Capstan try to fix a 1963 Philips recording made at Notre Dame, where on side B, the most modern music of the record, there was a work for organ and a choir of brasses where the last ones where pitched at A=435 and the organ fluctuates between A=429 to 433. No matter how powerfull software is Capstan, it is impossible to make this record sound "natural". I've been working with it from about 2 months, correcting bar by bar and it looks that is wasted time.
Very interesting and well produced and shown! Greetings from Norway !
"We must accept the world we live in..."
This is one of those quotes I would say when some shitty luck happens to my friends. Because life is life and we aren't the true masters of life. Only true master of life is whole existence of all living organism that are or has been alive
When my friends are upset with life, I just tell them to lay down and die. I should try what you say, it's a little nicer. But not much. Anyway, we are horrible people, aren't we.
love all the videos in the channel! so informative, so clear, and great sense of humor! great job! wish I had known this channel earlier
I don't think the situation is all that fuzzy. I'm a recorder player. Although temperature can affect the basic pitch of a recorder by a few cents, it's a very small amount and tuning the instrument by drawing out or pushing in the head joint gives very poor results because it upsets the entire scale of the instrument. So a recorder built in A-442 could be played satisfactorily in 438- 442 maybe, but without much more variability than that, except for the case of very high temperature bringing it up to maybe 443-444 at the absolute maximum (most modern pitch recorders are built to 442 these days). If I found a recorder that seems to play at around 412 from the early 18th century I'd have to say it was built to play with instruments playing at 408-414. Other wind instruments have more variability due to embouchure control and the variability of reed making. Quite a few early 18th-century recorders do seem to have an A of around 412. That other winds are generally pitched significantly lower than 440 is pretty demonstrable. The 415 standard adopted by most historical performers of Baroque music has more to do with transposing keyboards conveniently transposing to 415 (approximately a modern G#) than as an imagined universal historical low standard pitch. But the inconvenience of everyone playing at different pitches today would make historical performance pretty impossible so 415 has been settled on since it is recognized that early 18th-century pitch was substantially lower than today in most places. Probably a lot of people performing Baroque music don't really know why this was adopted, but I think very few believe that 415 was once a universal standard. The 415 standard for Baroque music and the now fairly standard 460 or 466 for Renaissance music has at least helped assure some consistency in the instrumentaria used to perform period music.
Excellent
Small quibble, I know for a fact in the 1850s, the first device to sample pitch from a noise was the helmholtz resonator. But the technology was known before, with acoustical bowls, and other physical resonant sources built into performance halls.
Thanks so much for your stimulating and exciting talks !!! How about Stravinsky and mediaeval music and poetry !!! Best wishes. Warren
Interesting and of course, when you think about it, quite logical. I have owned various old keyboard instruments which have been used for unaccompanied playing and at some pitches certain notes have had a poor tone. I worked on the assumption that it did not have to be A=415, 440 or some number that generally seems to be etched in stone. I ended up with a clavichord at A=407 and a harpsichord at A=425. This gave the best sounding results and was therefore right to my mind. The idiosyncrasies of every historic instrument (and their modern replicas) will guarantee they will all have their own ideal pitch where they sound their best and to standardise them is to compromise. While sometimes necessary for accompanists, why compromise when unnecessary?
Here are three examples of three different wind instruments from three totally different European countries all from the 18th century. One a oboe, a bassoon and a recorder which as you know are just three of many example of wind instruments as well as organs from this period. This indicates at least for the first part of the 18th century a semi-standard pitch of a=405h :
Modeled after the four-keyed original in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, the Eichentopf bassoon is representative of the Saxon type bassoon of the first half of the century and could easily have been the instrument used in Bach's Leipzig orchestra.
Originally pitch-centered close to A-405Hz, this instrument has been scaled up to the standard A-415. It is also available at the low A-392Hz pitch and its original A-405Hz. Faithful to the original, the replica has brass ferrules, keywork and an ornamental crown on the bell. The instrument's scale and tone is even and focused with exceptional dynamic flexibility throughout its range. The instrument is offered with four keys and the option of adding a fifth, low Eb key. Please inquire about the choices of wood.
home > list > Hautboy after Carlo Palanca. A = 405 Hz and 415 Hz
Hautboy after Carlo Palanca
Pitch A=405 Hz.
Stained boxwood. Three silver rings and keys.
The original instrument :
Private collection. « Straight top » hautboy, light stained boxwood. One silver ring at the top has been replaced by a horn ring. Place of an ivory ring on the bell, rather badly cracked. The mark Carlo Palanca can be seen on each joint. This hautboy has probably been made during the 1750s.
This straight top hautboy is the only known instrument of this type by Carlo Palanca. Its low pitch (A = 405 Hz) could indicate that it was played in Rome where the standard was rather low at that time.
Carlo Palanca was active in Torino during most of the XVIIIth century, since he died in 1783 almost a hundred years old.
Alto recorder after Bressan
As an English recorder maker, it seemed strange never to have made an alto based on an English model. So a few years ago, I took the plans I had of the ex Hunt collection alto that is now in the Bate Collection, Oxford and decided to make a close copy of it. The original has full ivory mounts single holes and is pitched around a=405 Hz and I am making a copy of this instrument, without the ivory mounts. The waiting time for these instruments is at the moment shorter than for my “Denner” model, please let me know if you would like any further information.
Some people have perfect pitch. I often show off my historical pitch
Transposing instruments existed long before the modern era: the Ruckers transposing harpsichords. Alo I believe the Venetian 16th C harpsichord range up to f''' was for transposing reasons (up a 4th). How else can you explain it? Another example is the 1749 Silbermann fortepiano, perhaps the first example of semitone transposition.
Thanks Tony!
Bravo Elam👍
As always it's a very nice video. I wonder why you didn't mention Verdi and A=432
A brilliant explication (true of other parts of the series).
QUALITY AS ALWAYS. looking forward to learn more from you here.
OK, you really are a great musician, thank you wholeheartedly!
So, so good. Thank you!
about the only definite statement you can make about historical vs modern IMHO, is that historical pitches are lower that modern pitches. I say that only because the modern string instruments are structurally stronger so they can use steel strings with higher tension (mostly for volume and brilliance in modern concert halls). this pushes the pitch up relative to earlier eras.
Organs were frequently above modern pitch as a higher pitch required less metal to make the shorter pipes. Quite a consideration if it is a large instrument with 5000+ pipes!
As a practical limit to pitch, I can say from experience that the gut E on the violin doesn't withstand the tension of modern pitch for longer than a week or two. What to do when you play with a modern piano or harpsichord or organ at modern pitch. Well I always tune the string down a little bit afterwards. And practice at lower pitch. I noticed that modern players on steel string cannot do that. Players struggle to adapt to a seriously low organ. Absolute pitch memory can be a hindrance then.
Couldn't they have used beat frequencies between connected string segments of known slightly different lengths to determine absolute pitch to within a few Hz? If you have a string 881 mm long and divide it with a bridge at the 440 mm mark, and the bridge has a roller so that the tension will be equal at both ends of the string (not held different by friction on the bridge), and the tension and moment of intertia is such that their resonant frequencies are 441.00 Hz on the shorter segment and 440.00 Hz on the longer segment, and then you bow both of them with bow wheels like those of a hurdy-gurdy to enable continuous sounding, they will beat at a frequency of 1 Hz, or 60 beats per minute. But if the string has gone flat, so that now the segments have frequencies of 418.95 Hz and 418.00 Hz, and the beat frequency will be 0.95 Hz, or 57 beats per minute. So then you know that you need to tune the string back up until you once again get 60 beats per minute. Then you use the segment chosen beforehand (for instance the 441 mm segment to get 440 Hz) bowed separately (with the other segment lightly damped so as to quell its sound without altering the tension) as your reference pitch.
Thank you
Fantastic channel. Got me hooked until late today. you ever drop by to Geneva for a concert?
Today I was listening to a CD of Helmut Walcha playing Buxtehude in 1977 and I was surprised to hear that the pitch was far above A = 440, so I looked on UA-cam to see what I could find out about baroque pitch and I watched your interesting presentation. At 9:11 you talk about the transposition mechanism for keyboard instruments that was introduced in 1973, but I can't see how this mechanism can be valid for a specialist in baroque performance. Presumably with a harpsichord this mechanism alters the position of the keyboard relative to the strings, and surely the result will only be legitimate if the harpsichord is tuned in equal temperament? If the instrument has been tuned to unequal temperament, which a specialist baroque performer nowadays would prefer, playing a work in (for instance) E minor with the mechanism shifted to transpose down a semitone will alter the relative intervals between steps of the scale that the specialist associates with E minor (because the harpsichord will be presenting the non-tempered intervals associated with E flat minor). But I'm assuming that there is a 'standard' way to tune in unequal temperament, and perhaps there isn't - sorry if this is a naive assumption on my part. So would a baroque specialist ever use such a mechanism, or would he insist on the more purist solution of manually retuning every string a semitone lower, so that when he is playing in E minor but at A = 415, he is still hearing the same non-tempered intervals between steps of the scale that he would hear when playing at A = 440?
After you shift the keyboard you tune in whatever temperament you want. But even without this mechanism it is possible to tune instruments in different pitches. The mechanism we mentioned is just to avoid changing the tuning drastically often, as instruments like to stay more or less on the same pitch.
I own a lot of recorders (the instruments) that all seem to be tuned lower than other modern instruments!
I really enjoy this channel.
Thank's!
Well as a guitar player, I find most modern acoustic guitars have resonance frequencies that I have infact tuned strings to when other tuning devices were not available. It has always been accurate and yes I have found some guitars tuned to a different frequency but it is noticeable by modern day comparison. I can’t understand why the exact same type of comparisons can’t be done to antique pitch forks pipes or instruments? Getting a parameter for A should not be so problematic imo.
In the classical guitar, the lower strings are tuned close to the main frequency at which the internal air volume of the guitar resonates (it works like a Helmholtz resonator, near 90-120Hz). That is defined by the size of the body and the width of the opening. Only a specific range of low frequencies are reinforced there, the mid and high frequencies come only from the soundboard. That is why it's notorious in instruments with a smaller body (such as baroque guitars, and those of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century) that main bass resonance isn't present. By having a smaller volume of air (smaller size body size) that Helmoltz resonance rise, and reinforce more in the middle range of the instrument.
www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/guitar/intro_engl.html
Thanks for making these amazing videos! By the way, I have a double manual Schütze harpsichord of 1963 which has a transposition mechanism. So far, I haven't seen any earlier example yet.
Thanks, interesting!
Does the use of asideways moveable keyboard for transposition not presuppose tuning in ET?else melodic just intervals would be out of tune
finally you released another awesome video!! nice!!
I can hear the 432Hz mob (cf. Adam Neely ua-cam.com/video/EKTZ151yLnk/v-deo.html) sharpening its pitchforks...
Very, very interesting..
One wonderful thing about historical Spanish organs, is their pitch.
Rucker’s used Duims which correspond to modern inches. Harpsichords sound much better at lower pitch. I have a Dulcken at about a fourth below modern pitch. My favourite instrument but only for solo performance.
Chopin’s pitch: 434.4 in well temperament
Haydn’s pitch: 426hz in well temperament
Beethoven’s pitch: 455.5 in well temperament
Bach’s pitch: 416-418hz in well temperament
Grieg’s pitch: 435hz in equal temperament
Brahms, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff’s pitch: 439hz in equal temperament
Everyone after WW2: 440hz, maybe 442hz if in Europe
Great video, i love the idee of finding a more natural pitch for the voice instead of forceing a standard pitch.
Thank you for a brilliant historical and philosophical exposition of a complex set of problems. Altogether, one finds a rigidity in much contemporary "early music" theory and practice that is completely out of tune (in more ways than one!) with what we know of the Zeitgeist of the old masters. It is refreshing to see that your disquisition manages to avoid such nonsense.
Fantastic! I have the honour of teaching bowed strings in schools in England and also playing on gut strings professionally. I was at a primary school yesterday explaining to a 6 year old that "out of tune means it's doesn't match" whilst trying desperately to tune his tiny violin to a school piano. We are basically in kind of greenhouse in the playground so the pitch is completely different to what it was before the Christmas holidays, freezing at night and open to all temperatures! Well, I'm used to 415, A430 A 440 but I'm going to call this one "Mordor pitch/temperament"!
BRAVO !
The video begun with some gultural Slayer or such thing but them i realized it was just an ad of YT.
Every home should have an inflatable narwhal.
Is that the Honeymooners theme at 2:15?! Love it!
Great videos. Thank you very much!
"One does not simply walk into Mordor...without a tuning fork" - a Dúnedain musician
Thanks Elam, that was very interesting, as always.
What a controversial and interesting subject. I guess there’s still a lot to learn out there…
awesome explanation!
Wouldn't an organ sound higher in the winter, rather than lower as you suggest around 2:20? The pipes would contract in cooler temperatures, and smaller pipes sound higher, right?
It's not the pipe length that's affected by temperature changes as much as it is the speed of sound. The speed of sound (c) drops fairly rapidly as the temperature falls, so even though the pipe shortens slightly, its not enough to offset that change. The frequency of an unstopped organ pipe can be calculated as f = c/l where c is the speed of sound and l is the speaking length. Here's a link to a simple discussion about the speed of sound vs. temperature.
@@howeks Link is missing, but thank you all the same!
Many, many great guitarists of the popular styles of the 20th century would tune a semitome or more below standard pitch. Why? It felt, played and sounded better to them, either for vocal considerations or just for guitar reasons. Many different pitch centers were decided upon as feelling and sounding 'just right' for studio recordings, as well. Totally normal and common practice way back then, back then, then, now and into the future.
My first introduction to the idea of historical pitch was listening to Simon and Garfunkel's song The Boxer in the car and realizing it was , the guitars and voices are tuned to about A425
Great video! Thx!