350 Mr. J. Bishop on the Influence of the Pitch of the 



tones of the human voice in singing, it is of the greatest import- 

 ance, not only that the pitch of the fork should be uniform, but 

 that it should be conformable to the structure and functions of 

 the human organs of voice, to which all other instruments of 

 sound ought to be subordinate. 



How widely this principle has been departed from, and how 

 injurious these deviations have been to the vocal mechanism, it 

 is the object of the following remarks to show. 



The pitch having once been disturbed, the Philharmonic 

 Society adopted a particular one, the Opera another, and then 

 almost every maker of musical instruments chose his own pitch, 

 until at last it became difficult to get together performers on 

 two or three instruments which were of the same pitch. The 

 pitch of tuning-forks with " C Philharmonic " marked on them 

 may be very different, and there seems no guarantee for the cor- 

 rect pitch of many of these forks ; and where the pitch is so 

 various, singers do not know whether or not the music they 

 have been accustomed to sing is within the compass of their 

 voice. 



In this state of uncertainty, the Society of Arts appointed a 

 committee to investigate the subject, and to discover and report 

 on the best means of remedying these difficulties. Upon this 

 report being considered, 528 vibrations were recommended for 

 adoption by the Society*. 



When the nature of sound was first investigated, the number 

 of vibrations in the air which were necessary to constitute a sound 

 of a given pitch was accurately ascertained. It was determined 

 that any elastic body, such as a stretched cord or a spring, whose 

 vibrations to and fro recurred every second, should be denomi- 

 nated C, and that every power of the number two, expressing 

 vibrations within the limits of the range of musical instruments, 

 should constitute C in the diatonic scale of music. On this 

 system was the tuning-fork constructed, being taken for conve- 

 nience at the 10th power of 2, consisting of 1024 vibrations, 

 which will be according to the German and the French system 

 of notation, and 512 double vibrations on the system of the 

 English method of computation — this pitch, or some other of a 

 less number, having obtained the sanction of all the musicians 

 and mathematicians who had studied acoustics with reference to 

 musical science. Among the latter may be noticed the names 

 of Euler, I. and D. Bernouilli, Riccati, Poisson, Savart, Dr. 

 Young, Weber, and Sir John Herschel. Among those who com- 

 posed music nearly on this pitch of the fork are Handel, Mozart, 

 Beethoven, and nearly all the great composers up to the begin- 

 ning of the present century ; and, moreover, musical-instrument 

 * Journal of the Society of Arts, June 8, 1864. 



