Aprils, 1880] 



NATURE 



55i 



15° C. = I2 C R. is here selected and used. The tuning-fork alters 

 only by l vib. in 21,000 for each degree Fahrenheit, flattening 

 by heat and sharpening by cold (the exact contrary to an organ- 

 pipe), but this minute change may generally be disregarded. It 

 is best, however, to reduce forks also to the same standard tem- 

 perature. The tuning-fork, if carefully treated, will probably 

 retain its pitch exactly for any number of years, since we know 

 by examination that some forks have not varied one-tenth of a 

 vibration from 1S37 to 18S0. Even very bad rusting does not 

 flatten a fork by more than 4 vib. in I, coo. 



Suppose then that we had a series of forks, tuned in unison 

 v ith the different A's of different organs and other instruments, 

 how are we to appreciate the difference between them, inde- 

 pendently of the ear, which, even when well trained, is found to 

 be most unsatisfactory in the judgments it forms as to the magni- 

 tude of an interval ? The only satisfactory method is to measure 

 them, that is, to determine the number of vibrations in each 

 fork. For this purpoe there are elaborate contrivances-, but 

 only one is easy of application, and, as has been ascertained by 

 experiment, the results I have obtained by it do not differ by so 

 much as one-tenth of a vibration from those yielded by the 

 beautiful machines of Prof. McLeod and Prof. Alfred Mayer, 

 who kindly tested my determinations by them. The "tuning- 

 fork tonometer " was invented by J- H. Scheibler (1777-1S37), 

 silk manufacturer of Crefeld. Its principle is this : Two tuning- 

 forks of nearly the same pitch, when sounded together, break up 

 their continuous tones into a succession of loudnesses and weak- 

 nesses, called beats. The number of such beats that take place 

 in ten seconds can be easily counted when it lies between ten and 

 fifty, and most easily when it is forty. The number of beats in 

 one second is exactly equal to the difference of the pitches of the 

 two forks. Then again each fork can be made to produce its 

 own octave by being held over a proper resonance jar, and this 

 octave will beat with another fork nearly of its own pitch. Then 

 from any selected low fork, say about A 220, a series of sharper 

 forks, each beating (roughly) four times in a second with the 

 preceding, is constructed, until one is reacheJ which beats with the 

 octave of the lower fork. Then all the forks are allowed several 

 weeks to cool and settle, and the beats are afterwards counted 

 with perfect accuracy, a very long, tedious, and extremely 

 difficult operation. The sum of all the beats between the lowest 

 fork and its octave is the pitch of the lowest fork, whence that 

 of all the intermediate forks is immediately known. This done, 

 the determination of the pitch of any fork or pipe, whose note 

 l.es within the octave counted, is very easy. The forks I u-ed 

 belonged to Scheibler himself, and were kindly lent me by Herr 

 Amels, but I had to do the counting myself, and Professors 

 McLeod and Mayer kindly enabled me to verify the results. It 

 was by means of these forks and others tuned from them that I 

 was able to measure the pitches of other forks and of pipes, and 

 thus obtain the materials for this history. 



First a large number of forks were obtained, most kindly lent 

 or copied for me by numerous helpers ; then I determined the 

 pitch of a large number of organs, or obtained forks tuned to 

 them at known temperatures. Organ-builders helped me with 

 ancient pipes they had preserved from old organs. Pipes, of 

 which the dimensions were given in old books, were reconstructed 

 full size or to a scale, and their pilches measured. Then the 

 records of other investigators of pitch were searched, and their 

 procedure a-certainel. The chief of these were the measures 

 made by Scheibler; by Nake with Scheibler's forks; by 

 Delezenne with a sonometer tuned to a fork of Marloye's, the 

 accuracy of which I tested; by Lis ajous, probably with the 

 siren and bellows of constant pressure ; by Cagnard de la Tour 

 with the siren ; and the older determinations of Dr. Robert 

 Smith (master of Trinity College, Cambridge), Fischer (of 

 Berlin), Euler, and Marpurg made with a weighted string. From 

 these, together with my own, I collected more than 320 pilches, 

 nearly half of which were for the first time measured by myself, 

 reaching from a.d. 1361 to the present day, and on these the 

 following history is based. 



Early musical pitch was of two kind-, known as the Church 

 pitch (Char-Ton, Ton de Chape/ie) a.nd the Chamber Pitch {Cammer- 

 Ton, Ton de Chambre), the former adapted to the ecclesiastical 

 tones, the latter to the freer secular mu ic performed in the 

 private apartments or "chamber" of the prince, for his own 

 pleasure, as the band used both in church and chamber consisted 

 generally of his paid servants. Chamber pitch was also generally 

 u.sed for private, secular, and convivial music of all kinds. The 

 confusion in most books betw een these two pitches is exceedingly 



great, and the confusion has been increased by Praetorius, 1619, 

 who insi-ts upon calling the higher pitch the chamber pitch, 

 whether it was used in church or chamber, and who introduces a 

 new pitch, which he considers suitable to church (cAormassiff). 



That the general reader should be able from the first to form 

 some practical notion of differences of pitch, it may be men- 

 tioned that "mean pitch," as it will be called, or Handel's and 

 Pra;torius's suitable pitch, is still used in the three churches I 

 have described as using mean-tone temperament, and with equal 

 temperament at All Hallows the Great and Le-s, Upper Thames 

 Street, at the German Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace, and in 

 many country organs, as Wimbledon, St. George's Chapel at 

 Great Yarmouth, St. Nicholas at Nesvcastle-on-Tyne. The 

 " French pitch," about a quarter of a tone higher, may be heard 

 at Fulham parish cbuich, in many country churches, as Arundel, 

 Barking, St. Mary's, Shrewsbury, and will be probably heard at 

 the Covent Garden Opera this season. An ancient "medium 

 pitch," about the tenth of a tone sharper than the French, now 

 adopted as a church organ pitch by all the principal organ- 

 builders, unless some other pitch is specially ordered, may be 

 heard on a genuine old organ at Hampton Court Palace, and on 

 the present modern alterations of the old organs at Westminster 

 Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, the Temple Church, Whitehall 

 and St. James's Chapels Royal, and many other organs. It is 

 practically what the Society of Arts pitch was intended to be. 

 The modern high "orchestral pitch " used at present in England, 

 which is also the highest pitch used by Broadwood, Erard, Stein- 

 way, Brinsmead, and other pianoforte makers, may be heard on 

 the organs at the Albert Hall and Alexandra Palace, and at the 

 Crystal Palace; also at St Michael's Church, Cornhill. Exeter 

 Hall organ is a little flatter, and about the pitch u-ed in France 

 just before the introduction of the Diapason Normal. To get 

 the true sensation of these pitches, however, the organs should 

 be heard at nearly 60° F., as they rise and fall rapidly with the 

 temperature. But the interval between the highest and lowest 

 of these pitches is only five-eighths of a tone, and merely repre- 

 sents the rise in pitch since the Congress of Vienna. 



The great organ at Halberstadt (twenty-nine miles south-west 

 of Magdeburg, in Prussian Saxony) was perhaps the first organ 

 with three manuals and a pedal. It was finished February 23, 

 1361, by Nicholas Faber, and restored in 1495 by Gregory 

 Kleng. It existed, unused, in the days of Pranonus, 1619, who 

 figured its keyboards, described it, and gave the measurements 

 of its large -t pipe, B natural, four octaves below the B just 

 above the bass staff, which was probably unaltered in length by 

 Kleng, so that it gives a pilch 500 years old, the earliest 1 have 

 been able to obtain. I had a pipe constmcted to a scale of one- 

 sixteenlh, sounding four octaves higher, and by measuring its 

 pitch at 59° F. under three inches' pressure of wind, I obtained 

 A 506 (to the nearest whole number of vibrations to w hich I 

 here limit myself). This is a minor Third above mean pitch, 

 and five-quarters of a tone above our highest orchestral pitch. 

 This estimate agrees with Prxtorius's. Now this high pitch 

 and a corresponding very low pitch are thus justified by Schlick 

 of Heidelberg, 1511, who says : "The organ is to be suited to 

 the choir and properly tuned for singing, for where this is not 

 considered, pers >ns are often forced to sing too high or too low, 

 and the organist has to play the chromatics, which is, however, 

 not convenient for every one. But what is the proper length of 

 the pipes for this purpose, and conve uent to the choir to sing to, 

 cannot be exactly defined, because people sing higher or lower 

 in one place than in another, according as they have small or 

 great voices. However, if the longest, pipe, the F below the 

 Gamma ut [that is, F just below the bass staff], has its body 

 down to the [beginning of the] foot, sixteen times the annexed 

 line [which was 4! Rhenish inches long, so that the pipe was 61 

 Rhenish feet in length], I think it will be a suitable length for 

 the choir. But if you build an organ a fifth larger, then you 

 mu t make C in the pedal [that is, C on the second leger line 

 below the bass staft] of this length." And then he goes on to 

 explain how these dimensions best suit the ecclesiastical tones, 

 going through each in succession, and gives the preference to the 

 first pitch with the 6J Rhenish foot pipe on F. Now, making 

 models of the proper dimensions, I found the first pitch was 

 A 377, which is a whole tone flatter than mean pitch, and 

 more than a minor Third flatter than our highest orchestral 

 pitch ; and the second pitch was A 504, that i-, the same as the 

 Halberstadt organ (for one or two vibrations are an insensible 

 difference in organ pitch for the tuning A). We have then the 

 same man, at the same time and for the same purpose — the 



