On 04.09.2005 23:35 Uhr David W. Fenton wrote:
Well, I'm quite well aware of where it comes from and that's why I also know that it's a pragmatic solution to a problem that is much more complex than most people are aware. When it is assumed that everyone playing early music plays at 415, there's something wrong somewhere.
Well, that assumption is certainly no longer followed where I play. It somewhat depends on the occasion, and for similar reasons as you discribed for your decision to play at 440 the standard baroque "gig" (ie Messiah, John or Matthew Passion etc) will be at 415, while anything after 1750 is likely to be played at 430. That's mostly for the wind's sake, I guess. 430 classical is in fact much more dubious than 415 baroque (at least as German high baroque is concerned). But as I said, with anything that is a little more serious people will generally try to find out more. I will be playing at 438 in a week's time, doing Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann. Someone has done some research on this and that's what they came up with.
When we recorded the Flying Dutchman on period instruments last year we settled for 440. I think Wagner had an even higher pitch but that would have meant a large investment into wind instruments, so eventually we settled for this compromise.
For my recordings of Haydn's early string trios I chose 421 Hz. I believe this is the pitch that allegedly Mozart's piano was made for, and probably quite close to Viennese chamber pitch if there was such a thing. I did quite a lot of research and talked to several knowledgeable people beforehand and that seemed like a pretty good assumption.
However, even in the second half of the 18th century pitch varied a lot between cities in Europe.
If anyone is interested and can read German the article on tuning and pitch in the latest MGG is quite good.
Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
