From: alves@calvin.usc.edu (William Alves)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Authentic performance/pitch.
Date: 20 Aug 1992 12:33:21 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: calvin.usc.edu

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? And is pitch really likely
>to have been as standardised in those times as it supposedly is now for 
>conventional performance?
>
The most comprehensive survey of this topic is Arthur Mendel's "Musical
Pitch Since 1500: A Reexamination" in Acta Musicologica I (1978) [also
published as a separate monograph]. First of all, yes there are tuning
forks, but only from the eighteenth century, when they were invented.
Otherwise Mendel lists a large number of clues of absolute pitch reference:
surviving instruments, organ pipes, and so on.

To boil down all of this length study, Mendel says that a) There was
no standard pitch reference before the 19th century. What pitch references
did exist were local at best. b) The notion that there has been a steady
climb in absolute pitch since the baroque is a myth, first of all, because
of point (a), but secondly, his evidences of pitch references showed that
what was called A (leaving aside for the moment the complicating factors
of chorton and tief-chorton) varied as much as a minor third on either
side of 440. If one were to take an "average" of all of his pitch references,
it would come out closer to 440 than 415.

So why did early instrument groups decide on 415? First of all, I suppose
that they may have been a victim of the still-prevalent myth that absolute
pitch has been marching steadily up. More importantly, I understand that
several of the most popular surviving instruments and instrument designs
that modern manufacturers of early instruments follow were close to 415.
This may have to do with the country of origin, because there were definite
preferences on a national level, though much less specific than references
on a local level. Finally, some of the most famous early string instruments
still being used were originally built for a lower pitch reference. Hence
they had to be reinforced to play at modern tension levels. Finally,
because of the nature of the modern world with musicians playing with
other musicians from all over the world, early instrument groups had
to standardize on something out of practicality. To be truly "authentic"
they would probably all be playing at different pitch levels.

For another viewpoint as well as a codification of the chorton/tief chorton
questions, see the Grove's article on pitch. The author attempts to show
how, instead of "no standard" there are actually "many standards." Such
a viewpoint is difficult to refute simply from the physical evidence if
every semitone is a different "standard," each of which has a margin of
error of one semitone.

>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. 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. 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.
>
Yes, key associations go back much further than Bach, but they seemed to
be especially popular among theoretical writers from the end of the 17th
century. However, the theorists seemed to disagree not only on the cause
of these different associations, but also as to what keys are associated
with what emotions. Thus D major might mean something very different to
different composers or writers.

As for the cause of the associations, if the pitch reference varies so
much from place to place and few people have perfect pitch anyway, recog-
nition of the absolute pitch is probably not an answer. Instead, most of
the writers (at least in the first half of the 18th century) put the
cause down as the intervallic differences between notes in unequal tem-
perament. In fact, there raged a fierce debate about equal temperament,
those arguing against saying that it would erase such key associations.

Another source of key associations are that certain instruments of the
period play well only in certain keys. Thus the keys inherit the emotional
qualities associated with the instruments. One of the most famous examples
of this is the association of D major with fanfares, festiveness, and
celebration because D major is the most common key for reconstructions
of baroque trumpets. An interesting example is Bach's Magnificat in D
with wonderful celebratory choruses with D trumpets. However, an earlier
version of the Magnificat is known (from Weimar I believe) in Eb. The
associations of the piece didn't change, apparently only the preferred key
of the local trumpet maker in Weimar differed from the preferred key of 
the local trumpet maker in Leipzig.

Keys that include many of the open strings of the string instruments
(chiefly sharp keys) are likely to produce more "resonant" music because
string players of the day played open strings whenever possible. By
contrast the key of f minor would seem somewhat more "muted" when played
by baroque strings. Perhaps this is part of the source of the claim that
sharp keys are "brighter."

And since you brought up Bach's WTC, a word of warning about being too
literal and strict about key associations. Why do you suppose there is
a prelude in Eb minor and a fugue in D# minor? (Perhaps I have it back-
wards, I don't remember.) Because they had slightly different emotional
associations that Bach wanted to contrast (though he did it nowhere else)?
Apparently the source of the D# minor fugue is an earlier piece in D
minor which Bach could easily include by simply writing in a new key
signature and changing the accidentals appropriately. Certainly a lot
easier than recopying the entire piece transposed!

>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?

Who knows what pitch standard Bach or Handel might have preferred? The
evidence, though, seems to say that Bach was much more concerned with
the playability and sound of instruments and probably the difference
of temperament in different keys than in absolute pitch per se. Personally,
*all other things being equal*, I don't really care if it's A440 or A415
or A 452.

Bill Alves
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical