From: roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Authentic performance/pitch.
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 02:55:43 GMT

In article <1992Aug19.180904.23209@bas-a.bcc.ac.uk> ucap22w@ucl.ac.uk (Martin S T Watts) writes:
>
>After listening a lot, lately, to John Eliot Gardiner's recording of the B-minor
>Mass and Trevor Pinnock's Messiah, it occurred to me to see whether anybody else
>has any opinions on the use of "authentic" pitch in authentic performance. I use
>quotes because I'm not so sure why all the ensembles have arrived at this
>particular pitch, pretty much exactly a semitone below modern concert pitch,
>for Baroque performance. Is it that somebody's extrapolated back to the 1740's
>the upward trend in frequency that has occurred since people have started making
>numerical measurements of pitch, or has somebody unearthed a Baroque tuning 
>fork? If so, who's too say it isn't out of tune? 

a) Numerical measurements of pitch have  been made as long as there have
been monochords, which is over a thousand years.  As long aswe know how
long the ruler was, and how heavy the weight and how thick the string,
we can figure out the pitch.  

b) Even easier is the length of organ pipes.  

c) There are hundreds of old wind instruments out there, many from
before Bach's time.  They haven't shrunk or expanded much.

>And is pitch really likely to
>have been as standardised in those times as it supposedly is now for 
>conventional performance?

No, but nobody claims it was either.  It was, however, within a fairly
narrow range.

>Judging by the amount of discussion I've seen of this topic, I suppose that the
>matter must seem pretty trivial to most, but it seems to me that there is a 
>case for modern pitch on Baroque instruments, yet I'm not aware of any group
>that practises it.

Lots of harpsichordists and players on rebuilt organs.

> The case would be that ever since the Well-Tempered Clavier
>(and possibly before - I'm no historian) particular keys have built up 
>particular associations for a great variety of composers and listeners, and
>these 'key associations' seem to have remained the same, even if pitch has
>steadily crept upwards. 

Actually, that's one idea that came into dispute in Bach's time.  The
properties of keys and modes had been described by musical scholars for
over 2000 (two thousand) years, i.e., since Plato.  The major-minor
system caused a crisis for this view, and it collapsed into a welter of
local or personal preferences.

>Thus the B-minor of Bach's Mass is very much the same
>as that of Liszt's Sonata, the G-major of the Preludes and Fugues from the 48
>is very much that of Beethoven's Sonata Op.31 No.1 and Dvorak's 8th Symphony,
>as the E-flat of Beethoven's Eroica and Sibelius' 5th is a common image in
>both. There must be many more examples.

But it's not, of course.  There are occasional pieces that link that
way, but most don't, and the reference must be strengthened with far
more musical glue.

>The way things are with the authentic brigade, though, the B-minor Mass comes
>out in B-flat minor, Bach's Double Concerto comes through as D-flat minor and
>so on. I'm becoming pleasantly accustomed to the sound of authentic instruments,
>but it seems to me the advantages of balance they produce could be retained
>at the modern concert pitch which I have this feeling Bach and Handel would
>have preferred had they lived through the change. Would anybody object if THIS
>became common practice?

Well, yes, because we'd have to throw out thousands of wonderful
instruments and accustom ourselves to brighter tone.  Old stringed
instruments, for instance, don't like the extra tension, or, conversely
,the lighter strings.  Old wind instruments, and modern copies, become
junk.

And I have no such feeling about Bach and Handel's preferences.  After
all, they often transposed a piece up or down, so key can't have
mattered all that much to them.  But they chose the pitch they liked,
and not another one; they had all kinds of options.

>Any other fuss-pots out there?

Nothing but!

Roger

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