454 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



where, the jjerformers were still obliged to use instruments at the high 

 concert pitch, which naturally caused much annoyance. Moreover, the 

 large organs built in this' country during the years shortly following 

 1863, did not copy the example of the Music Hall Organ, and outside of 

 Boston the French pitch was nowhere adopted. After much discussion, 

 and not without strong opposition, it finally resulted that a decision was 

 made to retune the Music Hall Organ, and raise the pitch to that ordi- 

 narily in use ; the feeling of those who urged the change and finally 

 prevailed being that while the lower pitch was desirable, and might be 

 the pitch of the future in this country, they were concerned rather with 

 the present, and might better wait the result of the etForts to introduce it 

 abroad, which did not at first make rapid progress. The Great Organ 

 was retuned in 1871 and remained thereafter unchanged at the high 

 jDitch 63 = 271 vibrations, and tempered A3* = 455.8 vibrations, until it 

 was taken down in 1884. 



No further serious attempt to lower the pitch in this country was made 

 for a considerable time. A number of years later, however, when the 

 French pitch had come to be quite generally adopted abroad, the subject 

 again attracted attention here. 



In 1882, Professor Eben Tourjee, then Director of the New England 

 Conservatory of Music, determined to introduce the French pitch into 

 that institution. For some reason, not wholly clear at the present time, 

 the standard chosen was a C3, a true sixth below the French A3 and 

 giving 261 double vibrations per second, and a fork of this pitch was con- 

 structed and adopted as a standard. The organ of the Conservatory was 

 tuned to this pitch, and the fork continued to be used as the standard of 

 the Conservatory until the close of 1897, when it was replaced by a new 

 fork of 258.65 vibrations, a tempered sixth below the French Ag. The 

 older fork had the disadvantage that an instrument tuned in equal tem- 

 perament from it would differ somewhat in pitch from one tuned in the 

 same temperament from an A3 at French pitch, 435 vibrations. 



Soon after this date several important orchestral organizations adopted 

 a lower pitch than the one then ordinarily in use in the United States. 

 In 1882 the orchestra of Theodore Thomas employed a sort of compro- 

 mise pitch, slightly higher than the French pitch, viz. : A3 = 437.4 

 vibrations. During the seasons 1881-2, 1882-3, the first and second of 

 its existence, the Boston Symphony Orchestra employed a high pitch, A3 

 = 448.5 vibrations, but in the fall of 1883 it adopted the French pitch 

 as a standard, a procedure which speedily became general among 

 American orchestras. 



