Morning journal and courier., 1885-08-11
Musical Pitch.

It was during the dictatorship of Costa that musical pitch in England rose to the height at or about which it now stands, and full recognition of the merits of that great conductor should not blind us to the two general brilliancy and sonority-we mean the
 harm done to the voices of public singers,
 and the wrong inflicted upon composers
 whose works had to be mutilated in order to
 bring them within the range of the hu-
 man voice. For instance, the enormous in-
 trinsic difficulties presented to vocalists by
 Beethovens mass in D were far enhanced
 by the pitch adopted by Costa that at the
 performances of that work in 1854, 1861 and 1870, by the Sacred Harmonic society, he was obliged to transpose, or even alter, cer- tain numbers of the vocal score. The reso- lution of the meeting of the Society of Arts was dead letter, and when a crisis did oc- cur nine years later it may fairly be said to
 have been forced on by the single action of 8 | great vocalist. MT. Sims Reeves declined to sing for the Sacred Harmonic society, giving as his reason, in letter to the Atheneum, the abnormally high pitch then prevailing. Detractors were not slow to insinuate that he was merely consulting the interests of his own organ, and not those of musicians as a
 whole. The odium musieum was aroused, and the papers of the day were filled with
 correspondence on the subject. But the mat
 ter did not end here, for this "strlke' on the
 part of an invaluable artist gave an entirely
 practical turn to the controversy. An enter
 prising firm of musical publishers took up
 the cause and organized series of oratorio concerts, with MT. Sims Reeves as their chief attraction, and the adoption of the French pitch as the chief novelty of their pro- gramme. new organ, tuned to the diapa- son normal, was built for the purpose, the necessary wind instruments were purchased in Paris, and the services of Mir. Barnby se- cured conductor. Now, as no mention whatever was made at the recent public | meeting held in St. James, Hall of this prac- | tical test of the lower pitch, which extended | over several seasons and was attended with remarkable success, we may be allowed, in | order to complete this brief historical survey of the pitch question, to summarize the net l results of this experiment so far as they can | be gathered from contemporary press noti- l ces. From these it is evident that while un- 1 doubted relief was afforded to the singers, no perceptible falling off in brilliancy so- | nority was apparent. The critics were al
 most unanimous in following the lead set by l the writer in the eTimes-presunably the late l MT. Davison-who candidly confessed that the difference between the pitches seemed so slight as hardly to be worth taking into se- | rious acconnt. A great number of these 1 gentlemen took no notice of the change at all; and after the first season press references
 to the altered pitch were almost exclusively l confined to the statement that it was still up-
 held. One newspaper which had assailed the | innovation at the outset was obliged to ad-
 init, on the occasion of the performance of | the mass in D, that the adoption of the l French pitch was great advantage; and in l another journal the diapason normal at tackled for the grotesque reason that, no l grand piano tuned to that standard being
 available, the "queen of pianistes" Mime. Arabella Goddard-was compelled to submit
 to the indignity of performing the piano. l forte solo in the Choral Fantasia upon a
 semi-grand. Eventually the need of more extended accommodation for the performers
 induced the promoters of these oratorio con- certs to migrate to Exeter Hall where they were obliged to conform to the pitch of the
 organ and abandon the diapason normal. l The general public had ceased to take an in- terest in the question of pitch, and the mu- sical world at large refused to be convinced of the expediency of the alteration. Thus
 the movement may be said to have died a
 natural death, but not before it had practi- 1 cally demonstrated the feasibility of the change where the question of expense was not allowed to stand in the way.