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From: ark@rabbit.UUCP (Andrew Koenig)
Newsgroups: net.music,net.music.classical
Subject: historical pitch
Message-ID: <2795@rabbit.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 11-May-84 16:12:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: rabbit.2795
Posted: Fri May 11 16:12:56 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 17-May-84 05:24:51 EDT
References: <176@olivej.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 33

This is all from memory, so take everything with a grain of salt.

The most widely accepted standard for pitch today is A=440.
However, I understand that several orchestras are inching up
to A=441 or 442, or even 443.  This happens for two reasons:

	1. Playing a tiny bit sharp tends to make the music
	sound "brighter" and more exciting.

	2. String players have a great deal of latitude in
	pitch.  Wind players do not.  If an oboe is playing
	with a piano, the oboe sounds much better if it is
	a tiny bit sharp than a tiny bit flat.  Oboe players
	thus start ordering oboes tuned to A=442.  Now they
	play with an orchestra.  The orchestra tunes to the oboe.
	And so on.

There was a period of many years in the early 20th century that
the standard pitch was A=435.  It has worked its way up a bit.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, the prevailing pitch was
more than a semitone lower than today.  We know this by examining
wind instruments that survive from that period.  I think that
A=about 408 was not uncommon.  It is for this reason that growing
numbers of Baroque performances are being heard at A=415.  Why 415?
Because it is almost exactly a semitone lower than A=440.  Thus
one can build a harpsichord that can play at either A=440 or A=415
by shifting the entire keyboard over a semitone (the key levers
are equally spaced in the back).

Curiously, some instruments that survive from the 14th and 15th
centuries show that pitch was higher then than today.  I seem to
recall something about A=460.