Tuning the recorder to a'=442 is perhaps a cunning way of getting around the
problem that you can pull a recorder out but you can't blow it up, so to
speak. In the current climate where keyboards are mostly tuned to a'=440,
it might help a few insufficiently warmed-up recorders to be in tune - but
only two cents? Crazy.
I responded to Ron's post but I think Wordpress deleted me, so I'll say it
here. Having a standard "early music" pitch is historically unjustified but
very useful in modern times, but the standard of a'=415 is ridiculous, being
a semitone below modern pitch. It makes mixing modern and "baroque"
instruments impossible, it makes keyboard players (and possibly others)
transpose by a semitone (yikes!) and thereby make unequal temperaments
impossible, and for us lutenists it creates any number of problems.
If we had settled on a'=392, we could not only have avoided the
aforementioned problems, we would also have a possibility of proper-sized
continuo archlutes (minimum 67cm), the lute quartet would have a treble lute
"in D" of 44cm (and other sizes accordingly) and singers of lute songs might
be able to pronounce words properly and get their message across, instead of
projecting their "voice" at the expense of all emotion and meaning. Just
don't get me started on the sizes of historical viols and the modern
tendency to play relatively small viols at a'=415, a procedure which
actually requires metal-wound basses in order to work at all. Nor, come to
think of it, the tendency of baroque lutenists to think of their instruments
as being "in D minor" at some notional pitch level, usually (guess what?)
a'=415, regardless of string length - anywhere from c.65cm up to well into
the 70s.
M
----- Original Message -----
From: "stephen arndt" <[email protected]>
To: "Edward Martin" <[email protected]>; "Ron Andrico"
<[email protected]>
Cc: "Lute List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2015 8:39 PM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Saturday morning quotes - Pitch
For what it's worth, some recorder makers are no longer making recorders
pitched at 440. They have bumped the pitch up to 442. At the Von Huene
Workshop, they told me that 442 is becoming the standard concert pitch in
Europe.
-----Original Message-----
From: Edward Martin
Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2015 11:21 AM
To: Ron Andrico
Cc: Lute List
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Saturday morning quotes - Pitch
Nice article, Ron.
I agree, in that there is no definitive pitch. We seem to have
settled on 440 vs. 415 as standards of modern vs baroque, but what
about 460, or 392? With the lute, a few sources state to tune the
treble to just before it breaks, and that is where one starts.
I am wondering, has anybody on the list read some of the arguments
about changing the modern pitch standard as a + 432?
ed
On Sat, Dec 12, 2015 at 7:27 AM, Ron Andrico <[1][email protected]>
wrote:
We have posted our Saturday morning quotations, this week on pitch
standards.
[1][2]http://wp.me/p15OyV-1qB
Ron & Donna
--
References
1. [3]http://wp.me/p15OyV-1qB
To get on or off this list see list information at
[4]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
--
References
1. mailto:[email protected]
2. http://wp.me/p15OyV-1qB
3. http://wp.me/p15OyV-1qB
4. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
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