NATURE 



533 



THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 1SS0 



MUSICAL PITCH 



ALTHOUGH the outside world knows little about 

 it, the question of musical pitch causes great 

 anxiety to the public singer, to the conductor of operas 

 and choirs, and to musical instrument-makers generally. 

 Musical instruments are divided into two classes : those 

 with fixed and those with variable tones. The first com- 

 prises organs and pianos and most brass and wood wind- 

 instruments. The trombone, the bowed instruments, and 

 the human voice are variable. Even the latter, however, 

 can vary only within narrow limits, so that they cannot 

 extend their compass at will. In the voice especially, 

 although a few exceptional singers can, so to speak, 

 acrobatise in music to the wonder of the public, yet the 

 really good and usable part of even their compass for 

 every-day work is comparatively limited, and if they are 

 called upon frequently to sing either at their highest or 

 lowest, the voice rapidly deteriorates, and wonder is 

 changed to compassion. Violins even cannot afford to 

 be " screwed up or down " too much, and rather prefer 

 altering the thickness of their strings, with by no means 

 a general improvement of effect. The thin strings are 

 particularly objectionable in instruments only too prone 

 to be played cuttingly. And clarinets and oboes, and 

 even trumpets, when they are made short and narrow for 

 high pitch, are only fit to be heard out of doors, as in 

 military bands. 



The whole secret of the difficulty lies in this : musical 

 notes do not represent fixed and determinate sounds. The 

 sounds collectively, when once the system of the scale is 

 determined, are indeed fixed relatively to one sound, but 

 that one has varied and does vary immensely. It has 

 become quite an antiquarian problem to determine what 

 sounds the writer of a piece of music attributed to his 

 notes. This problem has to a great extent been solved 

 by Mr. Alexander J. Ellis in a paper recently read before 

 the Society of Arts and abstracted below, and we wish 

 here to draw attention to the practical result of his 

 labours. 



Very little turns upon the music of more than three 

 hundred years ago. It must be transposed, as is common 

 with Orlando Gibbons's church music, and written in 

 notes which at the current value will indicate sounds 

 lying within the power of the singer. There is com- 

 paratively little of such music, and hence it is not difficult 

 to reproduce it in the required form. It is only con- 

 venient to note in passing how very widely the meaning 

 of the notes then differed from ours, Gibbons using a 

 pitch which Mr. Ellis estimates as a whole Fourth above 

 Handel's. But this does not apply to the great mass of 

 classical music which has appeared since the beginning 

 of the eighteenth century. When equal temperament (a 

 babe of less than forty years old in England, as Mr. 

 Ellis's facts establish) has a notation of its own, as has 

 recently been proposed in Germany, and ceases to wear 

 the clothes which Salinas designed in 1577, then it will 

 become necessary to transcribe these works. In the mean- 

 time we must use what we have to the best advantage, 

 and as much as it is possible in the sense which the com- 

 Vol. xxi. — No. 545 



posers intended. And what was that? The principal 

 historical fact which Mr. Ellis seems to have established 

 is that all over Europe, for two centuries, down to 1816 

 at earliest in Vienna, later in the rest of Germany and in 

 France, and down to 1828 in England (taking the Phil- 

 harmonic Concerts as the standard), the sound assigned 

 to the tuning A did not vary above one-sixth of a tone 

 above or below the value of Handel's own fork, now 

 in the possession of the Rev. G. T. Driffield, Rector of 

 Bow, and that hence this well-known fork represents the 

 mean pitch of Europe for all classical music. What is 

 that pitch ? It is five-eighths of a tone below the pitch 

 of the great concert organs at the Crystal Palace, the 

 Albert Hall, and Alexandra Palace. When during a hot 

 June or July day at the Crystal Palace on a Handel Com- 

 memoration the temperature, and hence the pitch of the 

 organ, is driven up, Handel's music has to be sung three- 

 quarters of a tone at least, sometimes a whole tone, higher 

 than he imagined when he wrote it. The strain thus laid 

 on the sopranos and tenors, especially in the choruses, is 

 out of all reason, and the music, deprived of its proper 

 fullness and richness, loses greatly in effect. Of course 

 such a practice can only be excused on the ground of 

 ignorance, and that is a plea which can no longer be 

 raised after the proofs which have been adduced. 



But what is to be done? Much music, considerably 

 less in quantity, and perhaps in quality, if we except 

 Mendelssohn's, has been written to a much higher pitch. 

 Thus the celebrated Gewandhaus Concerts at Leipzig, 

 representing Mendelssohn's pitch, were a whole semitone 

 sharper than Handel's fork, as is shown by Mr. Ellis. 

 Are we to destroy the new music for the sake of the old, 

 as we now destroy the old for the sake of the new ? Or 

 are we to have two sets of instruments — two organs at the 

 Crystal Palace and Albert Hall, or at least two sets of 

 stops in the same case? Of course such ideas are wild, 

 though not :o wild as they look, for Dresden has two sets 

 of instruments, and old churches (as the cathedral at 

 Liibeck and the Franciscan Convent at Vienna) have two 

 organs in different pitches, nay one German organ 

 certainly had stops in two pitches differing by a minor 

 Third. We have however no need to have recourse to 

 such devices. The French Commission on pitch in 1858 

 has given a satisfactory answer to the question. It has 

 settled a value for A nearly half-way between the old and 

 the new, but, as is just, rather nearer to the old, and 

 has fixed this pitch by a beautiful standard fork properly 

 preserved in the Musee du Conservatoire at Paris, the 

 only real standard of pitch in the world. This Diapason 

 Normal is exactly two-eighths of a tone above Handel's 

 fork, and about three-eighths of a tone below the Crystal 

 Palace organ at mean temperatures, that is below our 

 highest concert pitch. An important resolution was passed 

 at Dresden in 1862 by eminent conductors (quoted by 

 Mr. Ellis), saying that such "a lowering of pitch to the 

 new Paris standard appears equally desirable and satis- 

 factory for singers and for orchestra ; that quality of 

 tone would gain, the brilliancy of the band would not be 

 lost, and the power of the singers would not be so severely 

 taxed or strained." 



The rise in pitch since 18 16 has been the result of a 

 series of accidents. Nothing approaching to scientific or 

 musical thought appears in it. The most that can now be 



A A 



