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From: allyn@milton.u.washington.edu (Allyn Weaks)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: Transposing early music (was: Perfect Pitch)
Summary: old pitch was not chaotic
Message-ID: <18799@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 21 Mar 91 04:16:34 GMT
Article-I.D.: milton.18799
References: <3722@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP> <1991Mar20.154120.24561@eng.umd.edu> <31234@usc>
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 45

alves@calvin.usc.edu (William Alves) writes:
>The theory that standard pitch has shifted slowly upward over the years is
>an oft-repeated myth. There was no standard pitch in Handel's time, nor
>really until the twentieth century. Studies of pitch references from 17th,
>18th, and 19th centuries have revealed that A could be as much as a minor
>third sharp OR flat of 440. If you did take an average, it would probably
>come out to about 440.

I'll disagree with this - the myth is really that the olden days were far less
standardized than our modern measured perfection.  Even back to the
renaissance, pitch was nearly as standardized as it is today.  Everyone says,
'oh yes, 440 is standard modern pitch', but in reality, orchestras will play
anywhere from 435 to 445.  Some orchestras like a darker sound, some a
brighter.  Or maybe the oboist is having trouble with hir reed, so everyone
else has to compensate :-)

One of the confusing factors is that during the baroque, there were several
'standards' - organ pitch, which was very high (about a whole tone higher than
today), concert pitch, which was a little lower than we have now, and chamber
pitch which was about a semitone lower.  If you average all that out, you
might get anything, but it isn't a valid average.  The renaissance also had a
very high organ pitch, and a slightly lower concert pitch at roughly 470 based
on existing woodwinds.  Then just to confuse things further, the ultra high
organ pitch was so high (as high as 550 for one organ) that no one could sing
it, so organists were often trained to play down a major second... (see Grove
- pitch).

According to Anthony Baines in _Woodwind Instruments and their History_ (which
I just returned to the library, so I can't quote directly), even in the
renaissance, pitch was much more standard than you might think, because
musicians did a _lot_ of travelling.  Also, the Germans tended to make the
best brass instruments, the French were into woodwinds, and the Italians had a
nice line of strings. I know, gross generalization, but it does indicate that
instruments moved around even more than musicians did.

As a further bit of evidence from the baroque, Quantz in his _On Playing the
Flute_ describes how many middle joints you need to be able to play just about
anywhere, and he advocates the use of 9 joints, covering a semitone.  And
Quantz was no stay-at-home - he spent a couple of years travelling in Italy
and France before he settled down.  Since most existing flutes and recorders
range from about 390 up to 410, that works out to pretty good evidence that
baroque chamber music at least was played a good bit lower than today.

Allyn Weaks
allyn@milton.u.washington.edu