I specifically mentioned the woodwinds; instruments have survived at low
pitches, as much as a whole tone lower than an A440, and such low
Kammertons -- for example the French chamber tone of A394, circa a whole
tone lower than A440, and in fashion through the middle of the 18th
century -- have been noted.
In any case there was an extreme fluidity in pitch standards, and
players had to have been flexible. Take the examples of voice flutes:
are they tenor recorders in d, or very high pitched c tenors, or might
they be low pitched eb or even e instruments? Several recorders in a
modern eb survive -- are they low-pitched f altos, or high-pitched voice
flutes? The transposition virtuosity implied by organ pitch standards
has been mentioned before in this thread.
The great anomaly in the Second Brandenburg in the Trumpet in F.
Although a very different F trumpet would very much later become a
standard instrument, the standard trumpet of Bach's day was in D. But
that D might have been a high D (as high, perhaps as Haydn's Eb?), and
relative to ensembles playing in low Kammerton, might have been usable
as an instrument in F.
Daniel Wolf
Andrew Stiller wrote:
>
> On Sep 8, 2007, at 2:37 PM, Daniel Wolf wrote:
>
>>
>> I have always wondered about the case of the F trumpet in the second
>> Brandenburg -- could this have been written for a situation in which
>> the strings and ww. played at a Kammerton and the trumpeter used a
>> high pitched but nominally Eb or even D trumpet?
>>
>
> What then of the recorder and oboe?
>
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