The History of Musical Pitch - Music History
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Date: 2022-03-28
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Comments and reviews: 10
Monica
Playing in a mostly covered orchestra pit during a ballet or opera can do crazy things to the overall pitch. During one full length ballet (-Sleeping Beauty-) the furnace that affected the stage and pit had problems because it was old. The heat began to rise and the pitch got higher and higher. We string players could play higher up on our strings if necessary, but the poor wind and brass players could only lip up or pull out tuning slides so far. We ended up tuning between every 2-3 dances. The ballet director was not happy with all of the stops and starts for tuning. During the first intermission our conductor very calmly gave him a very succinct lecture/demonstration about how heat can seriously affect the pitch of all instruments. It helped too that dance critics who were there to review the opening night of this ballet also noticed the pitch problem and wrote about it in the next morning-s newspapers. The furnace was replaced almost immediately.
My grandfather played trombone in a military band during WWI. Years later one of my uncles received this trombone as a gift when we were preparing to sell the family home. He tried playing it but didn-t know about the old tuning. A 440 or the B flat above didn-t work on this horn so he sold it for scrap metal. It was very sad.
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Playing in a mostly covered orchestra pit during a ballet or opera can do crazy things to the overall pitch. During one full length ballet (-Sleeping Beauty-) the furnace that affected the stage and pit had problems because it was old. The heat began to rise and the pitch got higher and higher. We string players could play higher up on our strings if necessary, but the poor wind and brass players could only lip up or pull out tuning slides so far. We ended up tuning between every 2-3 dances. The ballet director was not happy with all of the stops and starts for tuning. During the first intermission our conductor very calmly gave him a very succinct lecture/demonstration about how heat can seriously affect the pitch of all instruments. It helped too that dance critics who were there to review the opening night of this ballet also noticed the pitch problem and wrote about it in the next morning-s newspapers. The furnace was replaced almost immediately.
My grandfather played trombone in a military band during WWI. Years later one of my uncles received this trombone as a gift when we were preparing to sell the family home. He tried playing it but didn-t know about the old tuning. A 440 or the B flat above didn-t work on this horn so he sold it for scrap metal. It was very sad.
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Lucas
Helmholtz (mid 19th century) put a good reconstructed history of pitch into his book on Sensations of Tone. He went back to old pipe organs with A = 392 Hz, also old bugles, etc. I doubt that anyone could measure the frequency of the tuning forks in Handel's time. I wonder what kind of vocabulary they used to argue about standard pitch 400 years ago. Anybody know?
Handel's conclusion (or premise, perhaps) was that singers (and perhaps violinists) wanted to sound a little brighter than their competitors, so there was a natural tendency for standard pitch to move higher over many years, which may result in the key that is most often used to sing certain pieces may move down over many years, because the high notes get harder to hit.
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Helmholtz (mid 19th century) put a good reconstructed history of pitch into his book on Sensations of Tone. He went back to old pipe organs with A = 392 Hz, also old bugles, etc. I doubt that anyone could measure the frequency of the tuning forks in Handel's time. I wonder what kind of vocabulary they used to argue about standard pitch 400 years ago. Anybody know?
Handel's conclusion (or premise, perhaps) was that singers (and perhaps violinists) wanted to sound a little brighter than their competitors, so there was a natural tendency for standard pitch to move higher over many years, which may result in the key that is most often used to sing certain pieces may move down over many years, because the high notes get harder to hit.
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superblonde
Nothing worse than a history of an itch you can't reach. Oh wait you said musical pitch -
Fully understanding pitch and knowing how to tweak it might win a Grammy like Jacob Collier did. Someday I would like to experiment with real-time instrument tuning in a DAW with MIDI trigger such that I can play/record chords on my electric piano while the tuning changes at particular measures, to create some fusion of tuning systems. I think changing my yamaha piano's tuning might be possible through a MIDI system message.
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Nothing worse than a history of an itch you can't reach. Oh wait you said musical pitch -
Fully understanding pitch and knowing how to tweak it might win a Grammy like Jacob Collier did. Someday I would like to experiment with real-time instrument tuning in a DAW with MIDI trigger such that I can play/record chords on my electric piano while the tuning changes at particular measures, to create some fusion of tuning systems. I think changing my yamaha piano's tuning might be possible through a MIDI system message.
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education
I love learning about the history of things.
I'd like to know how music lessons were taught with Bach, and Mozart , and Chopin, and such.
Did they learn to sing and read notes by sight and do intense ear training with drills, and music dictations, etc. before they started on klavier, violin, piano, etc.?? How often were lessons per week?? How long were they, 30 minutes, an hour, two hours??
It just seems that music lessons are just about playing the instruments right at the start!!
Any thoughts??
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I love learning about the history of things.
I'd like to know how music lessons were taught with Bach, and Mozart , and Chopin, and such.
Did they learn to sing and read notes by sight and do intense ear training with drills, and music dictations, etc. before they started on klavier, violin, piano, etc.?? How often were lessons per week?? How long were they, 30 minutes, an hour, two hours??
It just seems that music lessons are just about playing the instruments right at the start!!
Any thoughts??
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Jay
As usual, a very clear and concise explanation of a convoluted topic. Coincidentally, I've been reading Robert Jourdain's book -Music, the Brain and Ecstasy- where he goes into this topic extensively. And my local symphony orchestra has been holding an online seminar series where they just talked about this as well. I'll pass your video on to them.
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As usual, a very clear and concise explanation of a convoluted topic. Coincidentally, I've been reading Robert Jourdain's book -Music, the Brain and Ecstasy- where he goes into this topic extensively. And my local symphony orchestra has been holding an online seminar series where they just talked about this as well. I'll pass your video on to them.
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pepeledog
I am very much a novice and self taught In music. I have always wondered how the frequencies were determined and the history of musical development generally. Cannot find a lot of information on it. Are the books at the library that you could recommend?
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I am very much a novice and self taught In music. I have always wondered how the frequencies were determined and the history of musical development generally. Cannot find a lot of information on it. Are the books at the library that you could recommend?
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trevorguy63
I suppose we-re lucky that at the very least people agreed to tune on the basis of A and not any note they wanted! In tunings other than equal temperament, I-m guessing that would-ve led to even more confusion and discrepancies
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I suppose we-re lucky that at the very least people agreed to tune on the basis of A and not any note they wanted! In tunings other than equal temperament, I-m guessing that would-ve led to even more confusion and discrepancies
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Bill
Having so many variations of concert pitch years ago must have been some headache for musicians travelling across Europe, Acceptable enough for instruments that can be tuned on site, but what about trumpets and the like.
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Having so many variations of concert pitch years ago must have been some headache for musicians travelling across Europe, Acceptable enough for instruments that can be tuned on site, but what about trumpets and the like.
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loganlocke1
But sir, wouldn't the pitch the be based upon the 55 key box piano and the harpsichord and spinet??? And isn't that the reason why the tempered scale was created?
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But sir, wouldn't the pitch the be based upon the 55 key box piano and the harpsichord and spinet??? And isn't that the reason why the tempered scale was created?
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IainMBB
Excellent lecture Gareth,. Many thanks. Sorry to nit-pick, but as an audio-engineer I feel I have to mention that Herz is written with a capital H. So, A=440 Hz.
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Excellent lecture Gareth,. Many thanks. Sorry to nit-pick, but as an audio-engineer I feel I have to mention that Herz is written with a capital H. So, A=440 Hz.
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