At 10:36 AM -0700 5/18/11, Dean M. Estabrook wrote:
Yeah, I have pretty much been instructed that the Baroque "A" is equal to our present "A-flat."
At some times, and in some places! The hardest thing to wrap our minds around is that THERE WAS NO PITCH STANDARD AT ALL!!! The modern A = 415 is just a modern compromise based on the fact that 415 is about a halfstep below 440. But travelers' reports make it very clear that pitch was lowest in Paris (around 392 or lower), and highest in Venice (around 460 or higher), and that local pitch could be anywhere in between. Today, instrumentalists own their own instruments and carry them from gig to gig. Back then, a church or court owned instruments tuned to their (very) local pitch standard (probably the pitch their organs were tuned to), and the musicians used those instruments.
It was even more complicated in Bach's Germany, where at LEAST 4 different pitches were in use: high and low kortone (church pitch, based on the tuning of the organs) and high and low kamertone (chamber pitch, based on the tuning of the woodwinds).
At one time it was bandied about that "Handel's tuning fork" was at A=415. I don't think anyone believes that any more. It's just a modern convention, because we have to have SOME kind of standard for wind instruments, and many of the local pitch standards WERE lower than 440, well into the 19th and early 20th centuries (435 and 438, for example, but band instruments were often built in "high pitch" which was above 440).
It's a big mess, and the scholars who worked on the Bach Geselschaft edition didn't have a clue about it!
John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[email protected]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
