552 



NATURE 



[Aprils, 18S0 



ease of playing and singing ecclesiastical tones — recommending 

 two pitches a whole Fourth apart. The lower of these pitches 

 was greatly developed in France. Delezenne found it as A 374 

 in a dilapidated organ near Lille, at L'Hospice Comtesse. I 

 found it in a model of Dom Bedos's dimensions, 1766, and he is 

 still the great authority on organ-building. Mr. Hopkins, of 

 the Temple Church, found it probably in Stras^burg on organs 

 built for the French, about 1 7 14, by the great German organ- 

 builder, A. Silbermann. The Rev. Sir F. A. Gore-Ouseley 

 says that most untouched organs in France are of this pitch. A 

 great deal of this depth is to be attributed to the lengths of the 

 foot to which builders worked. The old French foot was 6 per 

 cent., the Rhenish foot 3 per cent, longer than the English ; 

 hence the pipes of a French, Rhenish, and English foot long 

 differed so that the French was half and the Rhenish a quarter 

 o f a tone flatter than the English. Hence, when to raise the 

 French pitch the French one-foot was made to sound B instead 

 of C (as at Versailles, 17S9, giving A 396), the pitch practically 

 coincided with the Engli-h one-foot pipe put upon C (as at 

 Trinity College, Cambridge, 1 759). This seems to have been 

 also the lowe-t Roman pitch very nearly (uncertain whether 

 A 395 or A 404). Such was the low church pitch which was 

 principally worked out in France, the English example being 

 solitary so far as my researches extend. 



The high church pitch was chiefly worked out in Germany, 

 but seems also to have found favour in England before the Pro- 

 tectorate, and was also partially developed in France. In 

 Germany we had Halberstadt and Schlick, already cited, and 

 even at the present day we find A 484 at Liibeck Cathedral, 

 A 4S1 at St. Catharine's, Hamburg, A 4S9 (formerly, now 494) 

 at St. James's (St. Jacobikirche), in the same town. In England 

 we had a pitch of A 474, recommended by Tomkins, 166S, 

 and realised in Father Smith's old Durham organ, 1683, and his 

 St. James's Chapel Royal Organ, 170S, and in Jordan's, St. 

 George's, Botolph Lane, 1 748, and probably in many other early 

 English organs. Unfortunately the Puritans smashed all our 

 English organs in 1644-46, so that with us organ tradition is 

 rudely broken. Prtetorius, however, mentions a pitch much 

 used in churches in North Germany, which he persists, however, 

 in calling chamber pitch. On examining the compass of the 

 voice which he has written in this pitch, I find th it it could not 

 have been flatter than A 567, that is a Fourth sharper than 

 mean pitch, so that it was related to mean pitch as Schlick's 

 high to Schlick's low pitch. On comparing the highest notes 

 which Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) wrote for the different 

 voices in his church music, with those assigned by Pra:torius, 

 1619, it would seem that he used nearly this very high pitch, and 

 Prsetorius himself says that " the English pitch on instruments 

 is a very little (Hit gar gcrhiges) lower." In France Mersenue's 

 church pitch does not go higher than A 504, which agrees witli 

 Schlick and Halberstadt, that is it was a minor Third above 

 mean pitch. And even in Prsetorius's time organs were often 

 at this pitch, or a tone flatter than his sharpest. In the 

 Franciscan convent at Vienna we have the lowest form of this 

 old high church pitch in its smaller organ, untouched since 1640, 

 and giving A 458, practically our English highest concert pitch. 

 Early chamber pitch, like early church pitch, by which it was 

 primarily determined, was aLo boih high and low. As the same 

 band played in church and chamber the differences were always 

 some definite interval of the scale, so that they amounted to a 

 transposition often very troublesome. The mean-tone scale 

 may be considered to have been always in use at this period, as 

 the numerous others which were invented were generally slight 

 alterations of it. This scale differed from the modern equal 

 scale in having a narrower whole tone and having two kinds of 

 semitones, the large from B to C and E to F, the small from F 

 to F sharp, B flat to B, that is for chromatic interval-. 

 Expressed in vibrations, the great semitone was 7 per cent, of the 

 vibrations of the lower note, the small semitone""4i per cent., 

 while the equ.il semitone is 6 per cent, and the just 6| per cent. 

 The mean tone is 12 per cent., the eqnal tone I2i per cent. All 

 this rendered the mean tone scale unsuited for transposition or 

 for shifting of pipes in re-arranging an organ ; yet both constantly 

 occurred in former times. The higher chamber-pitch was 

 generally a great semitone to a mean tone, or mean minor Third, 

 or even a Fourth flatter than its corresponding higher church 

 pitch. And the-e chamber pitches came to be used in churches 

 in place of the highest church pitches. There seems little doubt 

 that the high church pitches, except the very highest, were 

 similar depressions of the very highest. In France, however, 



Mersenne, 1636, gives us a chamber pitch, A 563, which was a 

 tone higher than his own high church .pitch A 504, and corre- 

 sponded to Pratorius's highest pitch already mentioned. These 

 depressed church pitches were, however, still too high for most 

 chamber music, and they were still further flattened. The most 

 curious instances are in Hamburg, where the St. James's organ, 

 1688, built after the ecclesiastical tones of Roman Catholicism 

 had become a tradition, was yet so high as A 489, and had on it 

 one stop (as late as 1761, when it was removed), which was a 

 whole minor Third flatter than the rest of the organ, that is, in 

 the chamber pitch of the time and place. And Mattheson the 

 composer (1681-1764), an early friend of Handel, had St. 

 Michael's Church organ, to the building of which, in 1762, he 

 contributed upwards of 3,000/., tuned to A 408 — most certainly 

 the true chamber pitch of the time. It is curious that this pitch, 

 a small semitone flatter than mean pitch, was as nearly as pos- 

 sible that used by Taskin, A 409, who was court-tuner to Louis 

 XVI. in France, 1783, very nearly of the same time, and that 

 this corresponds well with the pitch A 407 found by Sauveur in 

 1704. This became a low chamber pitch, and conflicted with 

 that derived from the low-pitched organs. 



Mean pitch, as I have termed it, seems to be the result of this 

 conflict. This pitch was formally introduced by Praitorius as 

 the most suitable pitch he could find for Protestant church 

 music, and it was fixed by a drawing of the dimensions of his 

 pipe, 1619, whence I had one constructed which gave C 507, 

 corresponding to mean tone A 424, and this was also the precise 

 pitch to which the London Philharmonic Society played from its 

 foundation, 1813, to 1828. The mean pitch varied slightly 

 within the limits A 415 (found in G. Silbermann's organ at the 

 Roman Catholic Church, Dresden, 1722, as determined by forks 

 chained to it by King Frederick August der Gerechte, which 

 remained till 1824, one of which I have myself measured — this 

 organ gave A 418 in 187S), and A 42S, used by Renatus Harris, 

 1696. The mean of this is A 422J, which is the pitch of 

 Handel's own fork, a pitch which I also found at Verona, and at 

 Padua about 1 780, and Delezenne found at Lille about 1754. 

 This is also the pitch of Green's organs at St. Katharine's, 

 London, and Kew Parish Church, both A 423, and St. George's 

 Chapel, Windsor, A 428. The fork of Stein, maker of pianos 

 to Mozart, was A 421J. Seville Cathedral and all Spanish 

 church organs are about A 420 even now, which is also the pitch 

 of G. Silbermann's Freiberg Cathedral organ. In recent times, 

 1S60, this was the pitch of the Russian Court church band. The 

 fork of the Opera Comique in Paris, 1820, was A 423, and in 

 1S23 was A 428. The fork of the Dresden Opera under Carl 

 Maria von Weber (1813-21) was at A 423. In short throughout 

 Europe this pitch prevailed, as shown by above sixty pitches 

 which I have collected. The resonance of the air in the Cremona 

 violins, about 1700, shows two maxima, the principal about 

 C 270, and the other not so well marked, about C 252.^, 

 corresponding to A 45 1 and A 422 . The latter is mean pitch ; the 

 former, a great semitone higher, was the corresponding chamber 

 pitch. It was during this period that the founders of modern 

 music wrote, and hence adapted their vocal music to mean pitch, 

 which must be considered as the classical musical pitch, to which 

 our present orchestral pitch stands in the relation of a chamber 

 pitch a great semitone higher. The establishment of this fact 

 is perhaps the most important practical conclusion of my 

 investigations. A curious metrical relation also leads to a useful 

 classification of old organs having the mean-tone temperament. 

 Mean pitch corresponded to organs with a B-pipe one English 

 foot long, and I call these B foot organs, A 419 to A 42S. The 

 old sharp English pitch of Father Smith at Durham had the one 

 foot pipe on A, and I call these A foot organs, being a tone 

 sharper than the other, A 46S to A 475. An intermediate 

 medium pitch, also used by Father Smith at Hampton Court, 

 into which his sharp pitch was frequently altered by shifting the 

 pipes, had the one-foot pipe on B flat, A 43S to A 444. The 

 lowest organs, of which that in Dr. R. Smith's time at Trinity 

 College, Cambridge, is the only example I know for certain in 

 England, had the one-foot pipe on C, and was a C foot organ, 

 A 395 to A 404, which was equivalent to a French B foot organ, 

 pitch A 396. The variation of pitch here indicated depends 

 mainly on the difference of the "scale" or ratio of the diameter 

 to the length of a pipe used by different builders. Of course the 

 introduction of equal temperament has slightly altered these 

 relations. 



The unfortunate break-up of mean pitch in modern times 

 seems to have been entirely accidental, and certainly bears no 



